


Birds of a Feather

by Shocotate



Series: B is for Bradley [2]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Baking, Canon Compliant, Costumes, Dress Up, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Gen, Hide and Seek, Irony, New Year's Eve, Picnics, Sleepovers, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-20
Updated: 2017-12-03
Packaged: 2018-12-17 13:34:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 29,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11852643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shocotate/pseuds/Shocotate
Summary: Rumours reach Central that a servant of the illustrious Hamburgang family, Jude, performed Human Transmutation. With Edward and Alphonse still missing in the north, Pride invites Rosalie Hamburgang to stay with the Bradleys over New Years, and through her secure another Human Sacrifice. Befriending a child like her should be simple, but it seems Rosalie has some secrets of her own.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took me way too long to start writing, but hopefully now that I’ve actually done so it will encourage me to keep going. I won’t give up this time guys, I promise.
> 
> The Rosalie fic lives on, as I saw her mentioned in a fic by 64K and she’s such an underrated character I wanted to write about her again, and Pride of course~ I love their unwitting similarities.
> 
> There are a few options for what Rosalie’s surname is, since the sub, dub and manga all have it different (Hamburgang, Humbergang and weirdly Harbinger). The katakana is ハンベルガング (hanberugangu), which definitely isn’t Harbinger, also I’m way too used to Hamburgang to change at this point.
> 
> This is set about a week or so after Bradley (You’re a Fine Girl), still during December 1914, but reading that isn’t really necessary to understand this fic. It’s also in the same continuity of my other fic The Dark in Need of Light, but you don’t need to read that either (but of course it’d be awesome if ya did!)
> 
> On with the fic, and oh yeah, FMA belongs to Hiromu Arakawa.

 

The presidential car sped along, and the boy peered out into the bustling streets that whizzed past his pink tinged face. He blew a long breath through the window, watching it freeze into a cloud and stream out like smoke from a tiny chimney.

No snow yet, regrettably. Pride would have preferred the somewhat bland greys of Central be once more cloaked in the pure and powdery whites that winter brought. Not for purely aesthetic reasons (though he was overdue a new coat for the season), rather the familiar chill gave more opportunities for him to cling closer to Mother and soak up the warmth that the cold hollowness of his insides lacked.

Pride glanced behind him. Mother's absence stung somewhat, no matter how necessary given her own tasks for the day, and the unwelcome shape of his little brother filled her half of the car. He went back to watching the scenery flit by, kicking idly over the edge of his seat, shoes brushing the plush covering.

His legs stilled as the coarse texture of Wrath's hand rested on his head, ruffling his hair none too gently, passing it off as just a fatherly affection and certainly not a deliberate attempt at messing up his hair.

"You nervous?" Wrath's fingers tightened between his perfect inky strands, almost a tug. He couldn't still be dwelling on their _discussion_ the week before, could he?

Pride rejected the idea in an instant; it must have merely been something stupid like _boredom_ during their little car ride.

"Not really." He murmured, before he dislodged Wrath's hand and smoothed his hair back down.

Winter brought a general slowness to military proceedings, and in light of the recent attack on Fort Briggs even the winter training exercises between the North and East were postponed until further notice. All these issues combined gave Wrath more freedom than usual, and all the more opportunities to intrude on his space and irk him.

"Tell me about this girl. Rosaline, was it?"

"Rosalie." He corrected his little brother, "Rosalie Hamburgang. She's a little younger than me, I think, and her servant's amazing at alchemy! They say he's better than some State Alchemists!" Pride chirped, not caring at all who 'They' were supposed to be. The rumour mill churned out its latest scrap of gossip, and from it the whispers of the illustrious Hamburgangs' obscenely skilled alchemist reached their ears. The whispers spoke of his long servitude to the family, and a possible _successful_ Human Transmutation. A certain lie, but anyone who got such rumours attached to them was worth a bit of investigation.

And as such, a meeting between himself and the young Hamburgang child had been arranged. During the past few days, Pride heard his mother and hers speaking over the phone in the hushed and anxious tones adult humans used amongst themselves. What could be so complicated about her staying with them for less than a week? She would certainly be well protected at their residence within Headquarters. _Why_ her mother had neglected to accompany her was another matter, but Pride did not care enough about the details to dwell on it for long.

"That's some high praise; I thought Fullmetal was your favourite." Ah yes, the Fullmetal boy and his brother, and their deadly escapades in the north. He shouldn't think on it too much.

"Mister Edward's so amazing already! But I guess meeting some other alchemist could be cool, too." Their disappearance had warranted this investigation into Jude in the first place. At least it seemed Edward was well enough to continue drawing from his 'research' funds.

"I hope me and Rosalie can be friends, and then maybe next time she visits, she can bring her servant!"

"I'm sure by the time she leaves you two will be inseparable."

Soon enough the two homunculi (and their too many bodyguards) stood on the platform at Central Train Station, garnering many glances at the sudden appearance of the führer and his darling child. Why had Wrath worn his regular uniform during their outing? As if he needed anything else to draw unwanted attention to himself. At least Wrath's uniform would make them easy to spot once the girl arrived.

The crowds milled about the platform at a polite distance, though some of the females pushed up off their heels to catch a glimpse of him, cooing as they passed.

_Is that Selim Bradley?_

_He's so cute!_

The boy flushed and turned meekly away at the compliment, but inwardly Pride absorbed it without any humility whatsoever. Though his act meant he could only be seen as a child, everyone knew he was above any other child in Amestris – well protected, privileged, pampered. At home, the servants and maids called him Master Selim with such respect, and the population's general adoration of him made this pandering the tiniest bit worthwhile.

The train eased into the station with a blare and a puff of smoke, and Pride rushed along to the end of the platform, not waiting for Wrath to catch up. Wrath rejoined him in far fewer strides, and they waited in front of the carriage marked _First Class_.

A seemingly endless number of humans streamed from every door; no doubt some of them would be Centralites returning from day trips in the countryside, or holidaymakers making the most of their time off work and visiting the illustrious capital.

Eventually a blob of black pottered out. It was a short, portly man dressed in the standard black of servant uniforms, helping a young girl down the steps. No, the girl _leapt_ down, as if she doubted she could clear the small gap any other way, dragging the man forward as he tried to keep hold of her hand.

"P-Please do not jump like that, Lady Rosalie." The man gasped, careful not to drop the small suitcase clasped in his spare hand.

"Sorry, I'll be more careful next time." The girl replied with a nonchalance that implied she would be anything but, her taking the suitcase. She spotted them, and turned to the man. "Is that them?" She tried (and very much failed) to whisper.

"I believe so."

Pride stood patiently and let Wrath deal with the introductions, the hand-shakings and whatnot.

"I am Maisner, the Hamburgangs' butler, and this is Lady Rosalie. Madame Hamburgang sends her most sincere regards, and thanks you for your graciousness."

"It is no trouble at all. I am sure Selim will enjoy the company." Wrath said in his rough, but more sedate than usual, tone, as if he was actually bothering to keep up appearances for once. Pride just hoped his flashes of 'eccentricity' wouldn't flare up lest the girl be buried in melons on the way home.

"Th-Thank you, Your Excellency!" Rosalie bowed quickly, holding her suitcase tight in two hands.

"Well then, I shall see you on Sunday, Lady Rosalie."

"Yup, see you later!" The child waved Mr Maisner off, and he disappeared back into the carriage.

Pride caught her tiny sigh, and she turned to face them with a nervous smile. She padded closer, and for the first time he could see her outfit properly.

Against the dull, metal backdrop of the train her cornflower blue cardigan seemed striking, fastened with a soft pink bow, and a dress of a paler blue trailed down beneath it, like the winter sky that peeked out in long, thin streaks above them.

"Well, would you look at that, son. Your clothes match." Wrath teased him.

Pride studied his own outfit, his own blues and browns. Pride merely tolerated his Mother's taste in his clothes; such clashing shades were something only a child could be allowed to wear. But as one of Mother's favourites he found himself wearing the colours more often than not. Still, to see the same gentle blues on another was… _convenient_. Now they would not look out of place amongst each other.

"Hi, I'm Selim. It's nice to meet you, and I'm sure we'll get along!"

"And I'm Rosalie. Nice to meet you, too." She shook his hand with a disarming enthusiasm, too cheery, almost. Her fluffy chestnut hair fell forward at the force of it, and giggling she pushed it back with her headband. "Thank you so much for letting me stay here."

Pride returned her grin with his own flawless, fake one and dragged her off with more inane chatter. As ever, it would be oh so effortless to get what he wanted from this foolish human.

* * *

It couldn't be _that_ hard to fool him, right? Four years of practise ought to be enough to play at being the same as him for a few days. If only he knew, then again, that'd only complicate things even more.

Rosalie perched on her tiny suitcase and watched his little blue jacket almost disappear into his bedside cabinet. He returned with a stack of three small scrapbooks.

"I only have these right now, but I think I've done a good job on them." Selim slipped two under one arm and held up the other. "This one's all about the Tiny Alchemist, er, I mean, Edward Elric!" He added, as if catching the confused quirk in her smile.

"You like alchemy?" Rosalie asked him as he handed her to first scrapbook. Even before what had made her end up _here_ , Jude's impairment prevented him from drawing any alchemic arrays, so she settled for skimming through his indecipherable books on the subject. They never held her interest long, with so many other things to waste the days on.

"Yep, alchemy is so wonderful and Edward's really cool! You know he became a State Alchemist when he was twelve? Oh, and the other two are for birds and other animals. We don't have any pets, but I just like seeing all the nice pictures of them." He set the spare books on the floor and sat down, watching her with an encouraging, boyish grin.

Rosalie nodded and leafed through the pages very carefully. Every part of it was filled to bursting with neatly cut-out newspaper articles and pictures of Edward and his weirdo-hollow-little-brother Alphonse. A drawing of Edward lay in the centre of one page, his bright red coat the only part that was coloured, decorated with a strange pattern on the back that Selim had labelled 'flamel', whatever that meant. His arm and leg were also tagged with 'automail (metal limbs)'. That must be why they called him Fullmetal, she thought. Their one afternoon spent together hadn't given her the time to find out such things, but it seemed Selim's respect for the brothers knew no bounds, and she admired his dedication, a little.

Another, more recent clipping mentioned the brothers heading towards North City. Briefly, she wondered what had led them so far away. Maybe they just enjoyed travelling around that much, given how far they had come to visit Jude after all.

Selim scooted closer to her, glancing at the page she'd settled on.

"Edward's so cool...hope he's ok… you know he can do alchemy without even needing a circle? I bet Mr. Jude's great as well. Can he do that, too?"

"I dunno. We don't need Jude's alchemy much anymore. Things don't change much, so we're pretty happy right now." _Yes they were; nothing had changed for her to be here…_

He nodded with a strange twitch in his mouth, sitting back in his previous place. Rosalie saw a soft, sad flicker in his peculiar purple eyes, or maybe she just imagined it.

She sat quietly, still pretending to read. She thought about the children she usually had to act around at school, and Selim was so much more than that. How could she hope to know how to act around the führer's son? Then again, such a status might have kept him away from other children his age.

Maybe…he's lonely, too.

Rosalie considered this, and wished it to be true enough to believe it. This was no good, she decided, just reading and being so distant would not help in being convincing, or help them become even close to friends. Though a lowly thing like her (lower than he would ever know) didn't have much of a chance of being his friend, she had to try.

Their combined nervousness hovered around them, until she had become more than a little bored in just sitting. The delicious roasted goose for dinner had given her an unbearable urge to be running around despite the risk of an upset stomach. Though, running down the hallways didn't sound like the best first impression in her trickery, so she sat for a moment longer and schemed something more normal.

"Hey," Rosalie called to him, "can we play…hide and seek?"

Hide and seek is fun. Hide and seek is what ordinary children do. And she isn't exactly _ordinary_ , but for him she'll pretend to be. It's the least she can do as a guest.

Selim blinked, digesting the suggestion, but his grin grew, and before she knew it he had pushed the books aside and was on his feet.

"Sure, it'll be fun. But only this floor, so no going up or downstairs. I don't wanna make too much noise so late. I'll go hide, you count to one hundred, ok?" Without really waiting for her to reply the boy dashed off, leaving the door ajar in his hurry. Given the direction his shadow flicked across the wall as he ran, Rosalie noted which side of the house to start on once she'd finished counting.

Tick, tick, tick. Rosalie crawled along to the clock atop Selim's bedside table, watching the seconds.

A minute passed, and she counted through the last forty as fast as she could.

"…98, 99, 100."

Rosalie peeked out into the hallway.

"Ready or not," She said in her best indoor voice. "Here I come!"

The young brunette took a single step before realising the flaw in her plan. Every corridor so far had looked the same. She was going to get lost if she wasn't careful, then Selim would be hiding forever, or until he got bored, or fell asleep in his hiding place. So, she reasoned, the only thing to do was open every single door she saw and then she would know where she'd been. This entailed some snooping too, just in case Selim was there. Rosalie didn't exactly _want_ to go snooping around, but hide and seek provided the most opportunities for her to explore this part of the house at least, and without making the mess that hiding might.

She pushed open the first door, flicking the lights on. The pale yellow bounced off the bare walls, the bare everything.

_A spare room…_

Well, it made _some_ sense. Her own enormous home in the country, only containing her and her mother (and the servants) was far too big for them, so not every room could have a specific use. With a distinct lack of Selim-sized hiding places, Rosalie turned the light back off and shut the door.

Five minutes later she was rummaging around in some kind of storage room that might have once been a meeting room, ducking under the expensive mahogany chairs. Most of the packed boxes were tied with thread, so she didn't bother with them. He wouldn't be in there.

Remembering her manners, she walked very carefully through the hallway until she came across another door, this time on the same side as Selim's room.

The gentler moonlight poured in through the gap in the curtains, shining over a stack of papers, several full ink bottles and a few quills on the table.

_This must be where he gets tutored._

Her mind sparked in suspicion. No tutor would leave things like that just lying around. Selim must have taken them from somewhere to make space for…

Rosalie focused her eyes on the dark shape of a cabinet in the corner. She knelt down, crawled along and reached for the two brass handles.

Almost immediately Selim flopped out. How had he even fit in there?

"Oof…" The boy groaned. He stared up at her from his place half squished in the cabinet, his bright eyes shining in the dark of her shadow, but half closed, drowsy.

"F-Found you!" She said, more in surprise that she actually had.

"Guess so…" Selim yawned while he dragged himself out completely. He kicked his legs a little, as if to wake them up. "That was…fun…"

She saw his flat, tired line of a mouth twitch into a slow, dopey looking grin. She might be tricking him, but he seemed happy.

"Ah, here you two are."

Rosalie helped Selim up and turned her head towards the voice. Madame Bradley smiled at them from the doorway.

"Did you have fun playing?"

They both nodded.

"It's time for bed, dears. Selim, darling, why don't you go and get ready for bed? I'll come and tuck you in after I've shown Rosalie her room." She lifted the suitcase in her hand, and Rosalie realised it was hers. No doubt she had gone to Selim's room first to check on them.

"Ok, Mother." He wobbled towards his mother, and glanced back with a wave. "Goodnight, Rosalie."

"Goodnight." She waved back.

Madame Bradley led her down the identical halls until they reached what would become her room. The room was simply furnished, curtains, some drawers, a table and a bed, smaller than Selim's, but still much more than she needed.

Even so, Rosalie grimaced a little at the effort they must have gone through for her to stay with them on such short notice, preparing a nice spare room, all for her.

Slowly, she unpacked her nightie, hairbrush and the book she'd brought from 'home'. Madame Bradley asked if she could see it.

"Ooh, I don't think Selim has this one. You two should read it together soon." She encouraged her. "That boy loves to read, you know."

While the woman busied herself with the book, Rosalie took off her cardigan, slipped her nightie on over her head, and, due to its lack of sleeves, shimmied out of her dress without much trouble. She folded her clothes neatly into the small drawers for tomorrow, before she slid under the quilt from the foot of the bed and inched up to the pillows before Madame Bradley could attempt to tuck her in. She heard her pottering around for a while longer, setting the book down on the table.

"Have a nice rest, dear." The woman's soft voice echoed along to her as she turned off the light.

Rosalie blinked in the dark. They were good people, and here she was, still pretending to be one of them. Posh little Rosalie, all they needed to see, all anyone should see. Though, she had spent longer now as Rosalie than she had as Amy. Surely that counted for something. And if they accepted her deception, what should it matter? It didn't matter.

Mustering a quiet smile, and choosing to make the most of her time as their guest, Rosalie burrowed in the covers of the bed she barely deserved, and drifted off to sleep.

Regardless of _why_ she'd wound up here, maybe this week could be fun, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sooo short, man I’m rusty, but hopefully I’ll be back into the swing of things soon. I’m hoping to get this updated every week or so. Will we get more scenes from Rosalie’s point of view…? Who knows~ not me, for sure.
> 
> Maisner’s name comes from the English version of the Blind Alchemist manga, even though I’m blatantly disregarding it anyway for Rosalie’s surname because I’m a hypocrite. The butler (he’s the guy who tries to drag Rosalie off Alphonse) isn’t given a name in the OVA so I might as well go with that.
> 
> In the meantime, for more Rosalie and Pride hide and seek goodness there’s my old ficlet Spectrum, in which Rosalie is the one that hid instead, and there are some other small differences in the circumstances of their meeting.
> 
> And as always, reviews and things are appreciated!


	2. Chapter 2

Something felt…off.

Pride pondered this while he chewed his slice of bacon. What had changed, what made today different? A flicker of blue and white flitted past the corner of his eye.

Ah, yes. Rosalie.

For the first time, the fourth seat at the Bradley dining table was occupied.

The eldest was seated in his usual place across from his parents for breakfast. Here he sat, always their sole focus, the centre of their attentions and affections, genuine only from one of the trio of course, _her_. And now Rosalie occupied the never used seat to his right, reaching slowly for a piece of toast.

Wrath stood, excusing himself on account of pressing work matters, promising to make it up by coming home _extra_ early tomorrow. Pride narrowed his eyes a fraction. With him preoccupied with Rosalie in the coming days, no doubt Wrath would use every chance to send them away, and keep Mother to himself. Mother watched Wrath go, before turning back to him.

"Selim, your new clothes from the tailors' are ready, so we shall be picking them up today." Mother smiled warmly, "I'm sure Rosalie will enjoy getting to see a bit of the city, too. Speaking of which, did you have a good sleep, Rosalie? I hope the spare bed suited you."

Rosalie raised her droopy head. An hour before, Pride had very politely woken her, careful not to let her oversleep on her first day. After a minute or two of quiet knocking, the child had opened the door with a wide yawn that she didn't cover, rubbing her eyes and looking very drowsy indeed for nine o'clock.

"Mostly." She admitted, stifling another yawn with the slice of toast.

"Oh? Was something wrong?" A sad sheen filled up Mother's eyes. Pride wondered what she was thinking of, and thought of her phone call with Madame Hamburgang. Was Rosalie here for some _other_ reason, separate from his?

"I was just so excited, Madame Bradley, so I kept waking up." The girl chirped after she'd gulped down the bread.

He brushed it off. Whatever infantile secret Rosalie might be keeping, he would discover it before too long.

"Well, if there's anything the matter, please don't be afraid to tell us. And please, call me Mrs. Bradley."

"Thank you, Mrs. Bradley."

After breakfast, the trio (and, as ever, their several irritating pairs of bodyguards) walked along the paths outside Headquarters, not towards the presidential car but out into the streets themselves. Mother said the air would do them good (and help Rosalie wake up), and most of the shops of interest, including the estimable tailors' that served the presidential family, clustered around Headquarters anyway.

The air itself held an unseasonable mildness, doing nothing to help Pride's wish for snow, and the occasional cool wisps of wind were a welcome distraction, though not cold enough to warrant putting his coat on just yet.

The chill, however, did succeed in waking Rosalie, and now Mother was attentively listening to her endless chatter of places she would like to visit during her stay in Central.

"Yes, we're going to a toy shop after the tailors', actually…" Pride supposed he would need to wait until they had arrived to possibly wring more about the alchemist from her.

"I'm sorry, dear, the First Branch burned down a few months ago."

At the mention of _that_ , Pride tensed, squeezing Mother's hand. He winced at the shame of reacting at all, digging his fingernails in a little too hard. Mother cast him a sympathetic look, like she understood. As if she could.

Pride tried to smile, reassuring her that it was nothing. With nothing but a gentler squeeze Mother indulged what she must have thought was his boyish stubbornness, his trying to be brave, and said no more about it.

"Is Central Park close to here?" Rosalie asked.

"The park is a bit too far to reach on foot, but we'll definitely visit it while you're here, Rosalie. We can have a picnic there, if you like."

"I'd like that, too, Mother."

Mother's hand tightened around his once more as they crossed the street to the tailors', lest another car come barrelling down the street. Pride wondered if Mother was holding Rosalie's hand just as tightly. He squeezed back, clinging to her until they stepped inside.

While Pride tried on his new waistcoat, he spotted Mother wandering off to another corner of the room, Rosalie following a few steps behind, towards the small mannequins displaying some recently finished clothes that were now up for sale. Outside of making clothes on demand, the tailors crafted their own designs of the season's latest fashions and showcased them, and if they were sold they always had pictures of them.

"…and you can choose any one you like, Rosalie." Mother's voice drifted along. Perhaps Madame Hamburgang had sent some money to cover her daughter's expenses, and the traditional New Years clothes were a part of it.

"Wow, really? Thank you so much!" The girl squealed in her too loud exclamations before dashing off to appraise every dress and piece of clothing. It reminded Pride of his own false fanaticism over the Elrics in the library, what felt like so long ago.

The tailor mentioned something about taking his measurements for his new coat, and Pride raised his arms up. The young woman jotted the inches down, the scribbling practised and precise with the numbers that never changed. It didn't matter, with the Promised Day so close he wouldn't be getting measured again, and the oblivious human would never think anything strange of her prestigious clients.

"I'm all done, Master Selim, thank you. I'll go discuss the arrangements with your mother."

"Snap!"

Something soft pressed into his shoulder and ripped him out of his daze.

"Our clothes match again." Rosalie said. Once she'd pulled away Pride glanced over the grey dress on its hanger, noting its pleated edge and white collar. It would probably suit her fine, though it seemed suspicious that she appeared to be deliberately seeking out clothes that matched his.

Pride let Rosalie keep her infantile secrets for now; he had more important things to consider, like what toys to buy later. He slid his waistcoat off, slipping it into a woven bag and handing it to one of his bodyguards to carry. It's all they were good for, anyway.

* * *

"You need to bring a teddy guest for the tea party, Selim. Do you have a teddy?"

Rosalie asked as she set up her new miniature tea set, her equally new teddy bear at her side. Mother had said they could play with their new toys after dinner, and Pride would humour her games, laying out his own spoils of their spending, a collection of wooden animals and tin toy train, beside the 'table'.

"Hmm, yup. I have Mr. Rabbit in my room. I'll go get him."

A few minutes later the two of them scurried downstairs and stood either side of Pride's toy chest, carefully rummaging through. Pride found an out of place piece of paper.

"Oops, this's something from my lessons; I'd better put it somewhere safe. I don't have any more for a while, but Miss Wespe says I'm her best pupil." Obligation to the führer aside, wiry Miss Wepse would never find a better student than he; a bright and attentive boy, no matter how monotonous her teachings. Pride would never allow himself to appear as anything less.

"Huh, then I guess you'll know what seven and seven and seven, and eight and eight make." Rosalie tested him, a strange, mischievous glint in her eye.

"Three sevens and two eights make… thirty seven!"

"Nope," She said, and shook her head with a grin, "everybody knows they make a full house in poker!"

Her childish swerve in logic threw him off kilter slightly, and Pride blinked while he tried to make sense of it, until he recovered enough to speak.

"I've never played that, sorry." What would a child be doing playing poker, anyway? He reasoned that maybe she had observed some older students playing it outside of lessons. It seemed the only sensible suggestion, and he accepted it as the most likely explanation.

By now Rosalie had forgotten all about his lessons and poker, scanning over another piece of paper.

"Oh, that's a story I wrote. It's about a girl named Brandy, and a sailor." He explained. "He loves her, but he can't be apart from the Sea. It isn't finished; I don't know what to do…" Why did she have to dredge up _this_ , what was meant only for his conversation with Wrath? He should have disposed of it when he had the chance. Mother surely wasn't expecting him to finish it, right?

"I know! Miss Brandy should go with him. Explore the whole sea!" Rosalie offered her ending without missing a beat, as if it was obvious.

Pride… paused to consider this. The Sailor's devotion was strong and unwavering above all things, and he and the Sea would never part, leaving Brandy to languish alone. But now Rosalie provided an unprecedented option, of Brandy… _accepting_ his devotion, and joining him.

"Sounds dangerous, she's just a waitress…"

"Who cares, if it's true love? They can both be happy." Rosalie sighed at the romance of her idea.

Somehow, he didn't feel like Mother would see sense, at first, needing to come to terms with the sacrifice of everyone else in the country. She was a _human,_ after all. Perhaps her love for Wrath would overturn her misgivings. Still, the possibility of him listening to such an ignorant _child_ was absurd, and he pushed the thoughts aside. Mother must remain apart from that aspect of her family. Mother would not accept him – and no longer love him – if she knew the truth…

" _Or,"_ Rosalie carried on, and weaved more endings without him. "He could go and live on a smaller sea, like a lake. Then he can catch the Yock-Ness Monster and get super famous!"

"The…what?" Pride blinked again, somewhat at a loss even outside of his act. His time spent away from children often made him forget their spontaneity and lack of focus. Still, part of him wanted to know more about this strange monster.

"It's this massive fish-lizard thingy, the legendary Yock-Ness monster! It swims around Lake Kauroy near Dublith, protecting the animals of the forest." Thankfully, Rosalie folded his paper up and placed it back where she'd found it. "It has muddy river grass for hair, and its eyes are made of frogspawn!"

Some hazy memory floated up in his mind, like a long forgotten bubble from the bottom of Lake Kauroy.

_You're too dense, Envy, both molecularly, and the other way. Keep on sinking like a rock._

_Like a rock!_

_Don't laugh at me! I'll just turn into something that_ can _swim, like a, er- a whale! Yeah!_

_You know, this is Yock Island. It's completely deserted. Why not do something amazing? Show us the most Yock-Ness thing you can do!_

The weary, ancient creature remembered that lazy summer spent with his siblings with a quiet degree of fondness.

 _People know about_ that _? How peculiar…_

Had some human caught a glimpse back then, nurturing such distorted rumours of a monster on the lake?

Pride smirked at the strange coincidence. No human could possibly know anything close to true about it, and urged her to continue her silly rant while he rummaged through the toy chest himself.

"…and it has the top, most best Yock-Ness level of any animal, from living on Yock Island for forever in secret! It's the king there! But no one's seen it for a long time. Wonder why it disappeared…"

"Maybe it's on holiday in the North." Pride thought of his still missing sibling for a moment. Reptiles couldn't function in icy weather due to their cold-bloodedness, but Envy couldn't be cold blooded like a true lizard though, right? Shouldn't the Stone make him warm blooded? He pushed the thoughts away. Envy would turn up eventually.

"You think so? I wonder what the Monster's doing up there. There's no water for it to swim in up there!"

"I'm sure he'll come back one day. We should go hunting for him sometime." Pride leaned in deeper, grasping. "Aha! Here it is."

"The Monster?!" Rosalie gasped incredulously, peering over his shoulder. Her hands were clamped over her mouth.

" _No_ , Mr. Rabbit." Pride plucked out the whole reason they'd come down here, having almost forgotten about it. He tugged the rabbit's blue jacket sleeves, straightening them.

"Aw, he's adorable. C'mon, let's go introduce him to the others!"

Back in the tearoom, Pride set the rabbit on his side of the table, while the dozen wooden animals, tiny in comparison, watched the proceedings. Rosalie seemed especially taken with the small ermine figurine, which she had named Winnie (short for "Winter", she assured him, given its snowy fur). She placed it apart from the others.

"…Winnie, Bearnard, this is Peter." It seemed Rosalie recognised the little bunny, but Pride didn't bother to ask if she'd read his books, as he had not. Mother merely bought him the toy on her own whim.

"Selim, Winnie asks that you draw a transmutation circle for the middle of the table." Rosalie lifted the sheet of paper that served as the tablecloth.

"Huh?"

"This is an alchemist tea party! They're discussing important alchemy stuff."

Pride tried not to roll his eyes at the sentiment of _animals_ wearing clothes andperforming alchemy.

"Really? Cool." Rather than go looking for a pencil, Pride slipped his S.B. pen from his pocket and tried to think of a circle that would be dissimilar enough to not look like a real one. His mind wandered.

During her infancy, Lust and he spent many nights among Father's books on alchemic theory. Only Father could create, so they stuck to the basics. Their studies bore an inward fruit, their focus on the circulation of power gave them the most flawless and efficient regeneration of all their siblings. The others were too impatient and stupid to put any effort into such a thing, with their all too bright and sluggish regeneration.

"Yoo-hoo, Selim?" Rosalie waved her hand in front of his face. "You're spacing out. C'mon, draw a pretty circle."

"Sorry, I'm just thinking up a good one." Pride drew the effortless loop of the circle itself, forming a basic square within it, and then a rhombus within that. For decoration he peppered the edges with flowers and dragons and Fullmetal's flamels.

"There we go!"

The tea party began; Rosalie tilted the tiny teapot towards the tinier cups, taking an imaginary sip before she cleared her throat.

"Good news, fellow alchemists. The recent earthquake on the border has made alchemy super easy, so no Equivalent Exchange for a while! Let's make the most of it." The girl grinned sheepishly at him, as if she hoped he wouldn't admonish her for her amateur understanding of the matter. Many fanciful children's stories (and more recently, movies) equated vulgar human alchemy to magic, capable of nearly anything, and for the sake of indulging her game, Pride tolerated it.

Rosalie made the bear waddle closer, up onto the 'table' and towards the transmutation circle.

"Bearnard, what are you doing? Don't play with the circle, we don't know what it does yet!"

"Y-Yeah, come back!" Pride mimed the rabbit scampering after the clumsy bear, falling onto the middle of the circle, and Rosalie pushed the bear down over his hand.

"Oh no!" With her spare hand she fluttered the edge of the paper. Was that meant to be the circle activating?

Over more muted shrieks and whines Rosalie explained the terrible tragedy of the circle making Bearnard and Peter grow to an inordinate size. In a bewildered, bearish rage the bear and bunny started fighting in their altered sizes, demolishing poor Winnie's countryside manor.

Pride belatedly realised this was some overly complicated means of explaining why Winnie and all the other wooden animals were so much smaller than the bear and rabbit teddies. He did his best to follow these senseless leaps in logic.

"Should we call the military?" He offered, wondering if she wanted him to go fetch his soldiers from his room. Her 'sophisticated' story of animal alchemists had changed so suddenly. Was she trying to appeal to his boyish nature by making her story more exciting?

"No time, we gotta get them back onto the circle. We can force 'em back with the train." Rosalie pointed to his toy train, and he hastily picked it up and pushed it closer. And who was driving? Rosalie said Winnie was driving. As a refined country weasel like Winnie had effectively stolen the train, somehow got it off its tracks and had no experience in such, Pride jerked the vehicle along the sprawling fields (the tea set box) in erratic lines.

"Get back in the circle, you two. So we can shrink you back down!" Pride said in Winnie's squeaky weasel voice. "O-One at a time, you're too big! Stop!"

Eventually whatever became of Bearnard and Peter's fight degenerated to nothing but Pride and Rosalie weakly pushing the paws of the teddies against the other. Though Pride knew a rabbit stood no chance against a bear, the animals being of equal size, and his container being slightly stronger than Rosalie, he managed to hold his own against her in their mock fighting, until he pinned her hand _gently_ down on the circle once more.

The paper fluttered, and Rosalie announced that the animals were back to 'normal' now.

"…And they all lived happily ever after. Except for poor Winnie's house…"

"Can't we just fix it with alchemy?" He suggested, already gathering his wooden animals together into the small box they'd been packaged in.

"You're right. Phew, a real happy ending after all!"

"Selim, Rosalie, your baths are ready." Mother's voice interrupted their games. She'd been there with them in the tearoom the whole time, and Pride hoped he hadn't disturbed her by making so much noise. "Come along, dears." She waved them towards her. He saw her soft, quaint smile, and he knew she hadn't minded their silly noise.

The two of them pushed onto the feet, leaving the bear, weasel and rabbit to continue the tea party without them.

They could put their toys away afterwards, he supposed.

* * *

"Are you decent, Selim?"

"Yes, come in please." Pride called as he fastened the last button on his pyjama shirt.

He sat at the foot of his bed, watching the door handle shake as Rosalie seemingly opened the door with her elbow and pottered in, arms filled with his box, rabbit and toy train, her white nightgown brushing the carpet.

"Thought I'd bring 'em down, since all my stuff needed putting away anyway."

"Thank you."

She padded further along, bending to unlatch the chest and laying everything down into it.

"You play football?" She asked, noticing the ball poking out the top.

"Yup, I'm amazing." Pride stated with complete confidence. No adult liked a boastful child, but in the company of a lowly child like Rosalie there was nothing wrong with the führer's son highlighting his numerous impeccable skills. "Me and my friends played all summer once. It was great." He thought of his months blending among the local boys in the south, decades before.

He remembered the smell of freshly cut grass, the crisp summer heat, grazed knees and bruises (none for him) and muddy clothes, playing with their lumpy, rudimentary football, him forging ahead of his team-mates and – naturally – scoring the most goals every time. Why should he wait for others to do what he was far more capable of himself?

Where they thought he could not see, the children called him a show-off, a spoilsport, but his unmatched talent spurred them on. Though Pride seemed the same age as them, they looked up to him both in and out of their games, and when the bloodshed erupted around them they huddled together amid the chaos, as though if they hid in the dark corners they would be safe.

Pride smiled sadly at the faded memories, their astonished faces. They had strayed from their humans so willingly. He licked the backs of his container's teeth.

Of course, the equally foolish child before him saw nothing amiss. She watched him with a quieter smile. Surely, Rosalie saw his daze as him thinking of his old life, before he'd been adopted.

"We can play tomorrow, if you want. I hope it snows, but we can still play."

"Awesome, it'll be lots of fun. But I bet it'll be nice and sunny, like today."

Pride shook his head, catching her put-on pout even from here. She stuck her hands either side of her hips, leaning a tad.

"Yes."

"No."

"Sun!"

"Snow!"

They both called to each other as Rosalie backed up, step by step until at last she reached the door and scampered away to her own room (though she poked her head back in for a second to whisper another quick "sun!"). Neither had the true stubbornness (or energy) to consult the weather house down in the sitting room, lest they be proven wrong.

The homunculus took her hasty retreat as a deferral, and accepted his victory by crawling along and burrowing in his quilt. He turned his lamp on and waited for Mother to come tuck him in properly.

The little rabbit's beady black eyes shimmered in the lamplight, sat atop the closed chest. Why had she left it there? No matter, he could put it away in the morning.

Tomorrow, maybe he could finally ask Rosalie about Jude. Now that the subject of alchemy was broached completely, no matter how childishly, he might be able to get something _useful_ out of her.

Pride nodded at his own reasoning, if only to convince himself that it _hadn't_ slipped his mind completely in the midst of their games.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Silly Pride, stick to the plan! Though Rosalie seems to be avoiding talking about Jude herself…
> 
> On a random note given my reference to it in this chapter kinda, I noticed that Lust regenerates far faster than her siblings, except Pride who doesn’t spark at all, or seem to take any damage. She manages to regenerate almost her entire body in less than a minute when Roy rips her Stone out that one time. I guess if you’re so old you get better at doing it.
> 
> The Yock-Ness Monster ‘Noodle Incident’ of sorts was part of a fic that I half-thought up once. I dunno if it’ll ever be a real ficlet since summer’s nearly over, and I hadn’t planned it properly. Feel free to think anything about how that came to be, noodle incidents are fun!
> 
> See you guys next week~ as always, reviews and things are appreciated!


	3. Chapter 3

No oversleeping today. She couldn’t keep staying up all night worrying about _that,_ especially given the occasion. And now, having managed a full night’s rest, Rosalie woke with the dawn, or more accurately, the time when the sun rose high enough to reach over the wall of Central Command. Whatever orange and yellow filtered in was quickly swallowed in shade, and she turned the little bell alarm on her bedside clock off early. Five to nine.

Her pattering footsteps echoed along the quiet mansion corridors. The little girl tiptoed her way out of her own room, down the still confusing hallways, and along to Selim’s room. Her bare feet stuck to the cool, polished floor, and for a minute she wished she’d put her socks on beforehand, or brought her slippers from home. It was a relief to find Selim’s door unlocked and land on the soft carpet.

Slowly now, Rosalie hopped up onto his bed, and jumped up and down on the mattress. Sure, Selim had been very polite in waking her the day before, but she couldn’t waste time on a day like this, especially since he was gonna show her his _amazing_ football skills.

“Wake up, Selim, it’s New Year’s Eve! Gotta wake up, so we can stay up ‘til midnight!”

Selim did not move an inch beneath his cover. Rosalie hopped for a while longer before she realised the vastness of Selim’s bed negated any of her bouncing.

“Wake. Up!” She bounced closer, but he did not stir, quiet and still like a doll. Rosalie knelt down, and settled for snatching his cover off him. For a moment he didn’t react, until his fingers twitched the slightest bit, and his breath seemed more deliberate. Yep, definitely awake now.

“Huh… Rosalie? Why did you…?” Selim grumbled without opening his eyes, and pulled his knees up further to his chest. “I was having a nice dream…” His hands curled loose around something she couldn’t quite make out, though one inched lower, feeling around for the quilt.

“C’mon, get up! It’s time for breakfast, and then – more importantly – football!”

“Did it snow?” He whispered, his eyes still closed.

“Erm,” She stole a glance over at the drawn curtains. “I think it’s kinda cloudy right now.” At that moment it seemed their wishes for sun and snow combined, and the sounds of a sudden and torrential downpour seeped in. “Oh… never mind.”

“Then it’s not time for football. Let me sleep some more…” The boy rolled over, sighing. He left behind whatever he’d been holding, and Rosalie leant closer to inspect it properly. The thing ticked back at her. Oh.

“Why’d you fall asleep holding that?”

Selim’s eyes snapped open, as if just remembering the clock at his side. He pushed himself up, legs crossed.

“Oh.” He turned away and stared off at some spot on the wall, forcing the words out, slow, like he was embarrassed to even say them. “Last New Year’s Eve, my step-father played a trick on me. He turned all the clocks in the house forward three hours, so I ended up missing New Years! I won’t let that happen again, so I hid the clock, and this one, too--” Selim leant over to the drawer in his end table, and pulled out a long silver chain. Oh, it was a pocket watch. He pressed it open and checked the time. “They’re both the same time still, so Father hasn’t sneaked in and changed either one of them.”

“You don’t have to worry, my clock said it’s nine o’clock, too, so I think it’s right. Keeping a clock like that… you aren’t a crocodile, silly!” She giggled.

“How do you know? Maybe I am.” Selim said with a drowsy smirk as he stretched to lay the clock back onto the end table. “Fine, I’ll get up, but tomorrow I’m sleeping in, ok?”

Rosalie nodded, knowing she’d probably want to oversleep after going to bed past midnight, as well, and left Selim to get ready.

* * *

“Ooh, look at this! If we can’t play real football, then how about this?” Rosalie said as she bent so far she nearly fell into Selim’s toy chest, grasping the box at the bottom.

They’d taken Selim’s toys into a spare room, one closer to the middle of the mansion where the sounds of the gloomy rain couldn’t get in. One by one they dug through and played with anything and everything they came across in Selim’s toy chest. Once or twice Rosalie considered fetching her book that Mrs. Bradley suggested they read, but this newest distraction took her mind off it for the time being.

Rosalie held the box up for Selim, flashing the smiling family on the front holding the straws. He scanned over the cover.

“ _Blow_ Football? I don’t think I’ve ever played with this.”

Rosalie set out the wires that served as the goals and the tin men for goalkeepers on top of the box they came in. She handed Selim one of the wide straws and placed the ball in the centre of the board.

“I’ll be fun.”

The floor proved to be far too low to play a game like this effectively, and in the end the two ended up stretching out on their stomachs and sitting up on their elbows. The funny angle made it difficult to breathe, but Rosalie told herself that the handicap would make the game more exciting, and maybe give her a chance of winning.

After five minutes, and at a horrendous 2 – 9, Rosalie grew more than a little frustrated. She hadn’t expected to win, but the way Selim acted like he wasn’t even _trying._ He seemed distracted, eyelids sagged, bored, and his rounded cheeks barely deflated at all no matter how long he breathed for.

Screwing her eyes shut, she blew as hard as she could, sending the ball skittering through the goal, off the ‘pitch’ and into a stack of boxes in the corner.

“Oops. I’ll get it.”

Rosalie shuffled towards the corner where it fell, feeling around for any sign of it, and her hand met only empty stretches of carpet. This made no sense; she had seen where it had landed. How could it have vanished in the time it had taken her to reach it?

“I can’t see it anywhere.” She sighed.

“Oh no, we lost it. Guess we can’t play.” Selim said blandly, and she could tell he was rolling his eyes. Rosalie huffed; she couldn’t just let the game remain unplayable forever over one lost piece, even if it didn’t seem like he wanted to play it anymore.

She continued to lift up each storage box as much as she could, though one brought a striped – and thankfully empty – hat box sliding onto her. Rosalie yelped more in surprise, while behind her she heard Selim coughing. Maybe the dust from moving all these boxes was getting to him.

As little more than a flicker, the ball shot out from wherever it’d been hiding, struck the wall opposite and rolled back into the middle of the room. Selim stopped coughing, and she crawled back to him, staring at the ball.

“What? How’d it do that?”

“Maybe it was magic.” The boy brushed it off with a shrug. How could he just accept something like that without being the tiniest bit curious? Then again, if he’d been so busy coughing he might have not noticed what the ball did.

“No, there has to be some _real_ explanation. I’ve seen some _very_ strange things back at home, you know, so this can’t be anything stranger.”

“Strange things? Like what? From Mr. Jude?” Selim sat straighter, as ever curious of her servant and his alchemy. A little stab of guilt pricked at her. She wished she could tell him, but Mother had sent her here to spare her feelings, so she shouldn’t involve him in it.

“N-No, from Mr. Edward and Mr. Alphonse when they visited my house.” She started to explain about Mr. Alphonse being empty inside, but figured someone like Selim, who idolised the brothers, already knew that. “Jude hasn’t been able to show me stuff lately. He’s been…busy.” Rosalie turned away, trying to not think about it.

“That’s too bad.” Selim looked back at the ball for a moment. “But hey, I can show you something cool!”

“Oh, like a magic trick?” She asked.

“Yeah! Can I borrow your teddy, and, hm, that hat box?”

Rosalie handed them to him, sitting a ways off to give him room. Who knew what kinda trick he was gonna do?

The boy cleared his throat, waving around his Blow Football straw as if it were a magic wand. He looked much like a real magician in his dark grey jacket and shorts.

“I shall make our nice volunteer, Mr. Teddy Bear, disappear.” He said as he placed the bear into the box, fitted the lid onto it and set it on his lap. Rosalie watched as he took several long breaths, closing his eyes. Was he thinking of what to do, or was it just part of the trick?

Wearily, his eyes opened again, but they seemed different somehow, faded and cloudy.

“E-Erm…hm…” He tapped the straw against the lid. “ _Lapis philosophorum_ … _evanescet ursus..._ ”

“Ooh, Xerxian, fancy!” Rosalie said, and pretended to keel over. Some of Jude’s alchemy books mentioned the old legend about Xerxes. Everyone in the whole country mysteriously died overnight, or so the story went. She grinned lopsided from on her side, admiring the fact that Selim knew enough of ancient language to be using them instead of magic words.

A kind of peculiar pressure settled in the air, suddenly very tense and serious in a way. It pressed down on her, and the girl found herself shivering a little. It must have been excitement, not fear. How could she be frightened over something like a magic trick? How silly. Rosalie grinned some more. Even if it was just some trick, Selim’s determination made it seem real.

Selim lifted the lid and held the box open for her to see, and sure enough, the box was empty. Rosalie gasped and clapped lightly.

“He’s gone completely, see?”

“Please make him come back.” She pleaded, partly to play along, and partly because she couldn’t be losing her new teddy after less than a day, after all.

Through his dull and droopier eyes Selim shifted, stiffly, like he was uncomfortable. Maybe his legs had gone dead again from kneeling down for so long. _Or_ , he could be trying to distract her from the trick, so Rosalie tried to ignore it and focused on the box. The box quivered, almost unnoticeably, making some of its black stripes look like they were shaking, too.

“ _Lapis philosophorum…ursi redire!_ ”

More suddenly it had appeared, the strange tension melted away, and Selim perked up with it, his eyes bright and shining again. He leant close and tipped the box up, the teddy bear toppling out and into her lap.

“Tada! Mr. Bear is back, safe and well from his trip to nowhere.”

“That was amazing!” Rosalie gasped a second time, covering her mouth. “I don’t know how you did it.”

“And you never will.” Selim crossed his arms, beaming with a smug satisfaction. “But I knew you’d be impressed. Better than boring old blow football, right?” He said, already standing to dig out something else to play with, and Rosalie couldn’t help but agree.

* * *

“Ok, you can come back in now!”

They called, and Pride stepped back into the parlour, seeing them in their huddle in the seats clustered around the fire.

Rosalie padded forward and stuck the card to his forehead, whatever object that they’d chosen written on it. For some reason her own card – marked _Deer –_ still clung to her headband, like she’d forgotten about it.

Inside, Pride’s endless rows of teeth chattered mutely, shifting under his skin. Even though it was hours ago now, his understated use of his shadows for his little ‘magic show’ had unsettled him a tad, and Pride longed to nestle in bed where he could relax, stretch out and sprawl himself over everything. His true body tore teasing bites out of the remnants of dinner, savouring the faint taste. Pride hoped there was enough turkey left for Mother to make them sandwiches tomorrow.

For the moment though, he had to play, and given the occasion this was not one of the most unpleasant of things. He let the small human lead him to the front of the fireplace, where he could continue this game of ‘Yes and No’.

He looked up at the clock on the mantelpiece – half eleven. Wrath would not send him away this time.

“Am I the Tiny Alchemist?” He asked.

“No!” They all said, as if they’d anticipated such from him.

“Am I a person?”

“No.” Wrath said.

“Do I live in Central?”

The trio exchanged some glances, as if unsure of what they’d selected.

“…yes.”

“Do I live in Central Zoo?” Of course, a place he could never go.

“No.”

“Do I have feathers?”

“No.”

“Do I have sharp teeth?”

“Yes.”

“Do I walk on four legs?”

“No.”

“Do I walk on two legs?”

“No.”

Pride took a moment to consolidate the information. Apparently it was something that wasn’t a bird, nor quadrupedal or bipedal, with sharp teeth and that lived in Central. He could think only of a snake, since they could live in the outskirts, but snakes had fangs rather than teeth. Then… what…

_Oh._

The homunculus grimaced a little – passing it off as a determined pondering – dreading that Wrath had chosen the ouroboros to spite him. Mother and Rosalie may not know what it meant, but such a strange creature was bound to lead to questions, especially from an over-imaginative child like Rosalie.

“Am I—er…” He would not say it. Wrath could not make him say it. “A…dragon?”

Again the three of them whispered amongst each other.

“We’ll let you have that one, dear.” Mother said.

Pride pried the card off his head and turned it over. The vaguely lion and dragon-esque insignia of Amestris was drawn crudely over it, its two front paws reared up as ever, tail coiled in a loop.

“We never said it was a real animal!” Rosalie laughed, but congratulated him on getting it right. She asked if she could get an ‘almost midnight snack’, and Mother allowing it, excused herself. Pride didn’t really watch her leave, sitting on the couch adjacent from Mother and Wrath.

It seemed the parlour games were at an end, Mother now listening to some kind of late night radio drama on Radio Central, interspersed with reminders of how long remained until midnight.

Wrath poured out two measures of wine, handing one to her, and they clinked the glasses together with a pleasant sound. He watched them, detached.

“Hmm, well-aged, full bodied. Perfect.” His little brother drawled after taking a sip, looking clinically down at the liquid, some drops caught in his moustache. “And the wine’s not bad, either.” He added with a wink, though given his eye patch, the slight difference between his winks and blinks went unnoticed by most.

“Oh, you, stop it.” Mother waved off the flirtation with a laugh behind her glass, but Pride caught the pinking in her cheeks that wasn’t just from the alcohol.

Pride glanced at his own glass of cool fruit juice. Of course, to the aging adults went the fermented fruit, and to the flighty, fresh-faced children went the fresh fruit juice. He thought of the still sealed 1662 vintage he kept in his _true_ home, safe and hidden in Lust’s room. They were all meant to share it after the Promised Day. They still would. He clung to that thought, and gulped his orange juice.

For now, he must be content with this.

_Clink_.

The quiet chime eased him from his bitter haze.

“Cheers, it’s almost New Year!” Rosalie plonked down beside him, apparently back from her excursion to get something to eat.

“Cheers.” He spotted the cheese pastry in her spare hand. “Cheese this late? You’re gonna have nightmares.” He warned her.

“I’ll be ok…” She looked bashfully away, and bit into the pastry.

The electric light dimmed for a split second, while outside the lightning lit up the dark, dreary sky. The thunder followed a second or two later. It seemed the constant rain of the day beckoned a worse storm to come.

The girl tensed, flinching. When she saw he’d noticed, she feigned a childish pout, terribly fake even by Pride’s standards.

“I wasn’t afraid…!”

Mother ushered Rosalie closer with an offer to brush her hair, and beneath that a more oblique offer of comfort. Rosalie snuggled between them on the couch, watching the fire crackle and eventually chanced a giggle at their fawning. Mother just smiled her gentle smile, smoothing the girl’s hair down as she combed through the more unruly strands. The three of them and their two and a half pairs of mossy, verdant eyes shone in the flickering firelight, identical from Pride’s distance.

He observed them at a stranger ease compared to earlier. Perhaps Rosalie had started to settle in, no longer out of place among them, a proper houseguest. He watched her smiling and laughing. The girl’s presence at their side seemed almost natural, even, as if she were actually their chil--

All at once her place among them stood as a barrier.

His own tinge of a more malicious green flared, it flashed across Pride’s lilac eyes, and he stood abruptly, almost spilling his drink as he slammed the glass down. Rosalie winced at the noise, but Pride ignored her.

Not caring how he looked, he rushed onto Mother’s lap, yearning to close this distance he felt. Pride’s unique eyes that so few humans could hope to possess wedged between them, a very real, very physical difference, proving he wasn’t her child, and he never would be. What did that matter, if she loved him regardless? It didn’t matter; his perfect eyes did not invalidate that.

Pride wrapped his arms around her, all but forcing Rosalie away. Mother smelled of flour and plums, and a small round cake on the table stood as a testament to her baking that day, but she’d said they weren’t to eat it yet for whatever reason.

“Now, Selim, there’s room for all of us if we squeeze on, there’s no need to push.” Her voice was firm, and he accepted the light scolding readily, if only for the acknowledgement. His container’s hands bunched up her shawl.

“I’m sorry.” He whispered, and huddled beside her in a much more appropriate manner.

Five to eleven. Wrath’s rough hand grasped his soft one, pulling him to his feet.

“Let’s go, Selim.”

“Huh? Where are we going?”

“We’re needed outside. Let’s leave the ladies to their business.”

Rosalie and Mother waved them off, as if they knew what Wrath had planned.

“What are we doing?” Once they were out of earshot, the elder hissed at his sibling.

“As I said, we need to be outside before midnight. Besides, look at you, so jealous of our guest.” Pride scowled in the dark, more out of shame that he had reacted enough for Wrath to notice. “Lucille is just being kind, as is her way. Do not punish her for being herself.” Pride balked, his retort jamming in his throat as Wrath used Mother’s first name, and said nothing else.

As they made their way to the kitchen, Pride calmed enough to realise their roles in the New Year tradition, specifically the concept of the first footing. Tradition stated it was good luck for the first person to enter the household in the New Year to be male and have black hair.

If Wrath hadn’t so audaciously deceived him the year before, maybe he would have been more acquainted with the idea, having never participated in the New Year’s ritual in any of his previous missions.

Now outside and holding their ‘gifts’, the two of them kept close to the wall and the covered walkway, lest they get caught in the downpour. Pride clutched the bottle of whiskey tight in his short arms, while Wrath held the coal, salt and a loaf of bread.

Given his burden, and confident it was past midnight by now, Pride waited for Wrath to knock on the front door.

“Who is it?” Came the cry from the other side.

“First visitors!” They cried back.

“How splendid. Do you have black hair?”

“And presents?” Rosalie added.

“Yes to both! May we come in?”

“Of course, of course!” They said. It reminded Pride of the myths of creatures who could not enter a human’s house without permission. Such foolish ideas.

“We have cake, by the way! Smashed-door-cake!”

The door swung open, soft, yellow light streaming out and over them. Mother beamed at them, while Rosalie held up a tray holding the crumbled plum cake. Another tradition, Pride supposed.

“Happy New Year!” Rosalie shouted over the rain.

“Happy New Year!”

“Come in, dears.”

The two homunculi managed grateful, sincere enough smiles, and they crossed the threshold together, out of the cold, damp storm and into warmth of their human home.

* * *

Finally.

The instant he heard Mother’s footsteps fade down the hallway, Pride sat up in bed and turned his lamp on. No need to keep himself confined any longer.

His shadows burst from his container, crawling over the walls and soaking up the lamplight. Pride formed several mouths as he stretched, teeth gleaming as they opened wide and shook, something no one could ever distinguish between a silent roar or a yawn, letting them shift through his shadow.

Pride’s container slumped down into the mattress in its disuse, eyes glazed and empty, mouth gaping. It looked dopey that way, and he eased it into a more comfortable position with a few more hands. Their razor-sharp edges did not so much as leave a mark against its perfect, artificial skin as he brushed its eyelids closed. There, only sleeping now. Content with its new place, Pride focused on pouring out into the rest of his bedroom.

For a moment Pride thought of stretching further to attend to Sloth, until he remembered that the Tunnel was complete, and that comforting thought cloaked him. The Tunnel complete, the required Crests of Blood formed, and now the year of the Eclipse was upon them at last. Ah, 1915… Pride digested the word, his body rippling in anticipation. The year Father’s Plan would finally come to fruition. So close now, so teasingly close after so long. Some of the hands looped around the posts of his bed flexed and flicked, eager.

Another flash of lightning illuminated the room through the curtains, the thunder closer. Vaguely, he thought of silly Rosalie, maybe she was huddled in her covers, crying at the thunderstorm.

Pride’s container was made to emulate humans in many ways, and tears were one of them. His true body lacked almost all of that, the ability to touch and feel (mostly) and Pride had thought that tears were also excluded for the majority of his existence. But no, the flawless magenta eyes of his shadow had welled with sorrowful tears once in his three centuries, frighteningly recent. His eyes that he shared with Father’s True Form… and--

_Don't think about_ that!

A quick spasm pulsed through every part of his shadow, and Pride forced all his eyes away, until he merely…encapsulated the room itself, coating everything the light touched in the endless abyss of his shadow body. It wasn't enough; Pride seeped further, more tendrils slithering under the quilt, around his container, squeezing it, but tender, like a hug. He shivered around it at the vain indulgence, and it shivered back, eyelids fluttering. Pride chanced it, forming a smaller eye close to it, and gazed upon its perfection once more, its pale, porcelain skin, its hair and beneath its eyelids the soft lilac eyes Father had bestowed upon him. In return, he would help Father become a God in any way he could. How could he do anything else, as his dutiful child? He needed nothing else. Nothing else mattered.

Pride regarded his container with a wide, wide smile that coiled across the ceiling, and embraced it tightly while the thunder and rain clattered outside, until the lamp went out, and he fell into a deeper, truer sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aw Pride, don’t be sad that you have nice purple eyes but Mrs Bradley and Wrath and Rosalie all have green ones :’(
> 
> I included some real old New Years traditions here, such as throwing cake at the front door and the first footing, and it was good luck for the first person to visit the house to have black hair and be male. Also please excuse my bad Latin, please blame google translate. Also blow football is a real game, I saw a box saying it was around as early as 1910, so I thought I’d make use of it. Whether it really is so boring, or Pride just finds it boring since he doesn’t need to breathe much we shall never know, as I’ve not played it :3
> 
> I had to make up a radio station because people in Central seem to regard Radio Capital as lame, so the Bradleys won’t be listening to it.
> 
> Thank you anyone who’s reading this, and see you next week hopefully :)


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about taking a week off, I wanted to get some stuff written for the FMA rarepair (I failed, I got nothing, noooo!), but hopefully this insanely (relatively speaking) long chapter will make up for it.
> 
> This chapter got out of hand. What's going on!? Please…enjoy it… *dies*

Another clap of thunder woke Pride from his soothing homunculus dreams, his container’s eyes fluttered open as his dream faded into murky darkness. Mother may think he dreamt of silly, simple things like flying, and that’s all she need know. With a _most angelic_ sigh, Pride found himself fully retracted into his container, no eyes or teeth painting the walls, or his shadowy limbs curled around him. Total darkness, it seemed. He couldn’t recall turning the lamp off, but it didn’t really matter.

The rain still clattered outside the window. Filtered through the curtains, to Pride it sounded more like a bubbling in its intensity. Yearning to return to his dream while it seemed in reach, Pride huddled deeper into his cozy quilt, glad to be nestled here, warm and safe.

Something tugged at the cover with a jittery gasp, and Pride became completely aware of someone else in the bed.

“W-who’s there?” He whispered, shuffling uneasily forward, reaching for the lamp’s string.

“It’s only me…” Rosalie’s voice called back. A strange twitch reached him from her place behind him, until Pride heard her gasp again and realised she was crying.

“Did you have a nightmare? I told you not to eat that pastry.” He said a little harsher than required as he shook himself more awake, quietly bristling at the disgrace of a human managing to sneak up on him.

“It’s not that, but I can’t tell you.” She sniffled, while he ineffectually pulled at the string. And again. Nothing. Why wasn’t it working? “Think the electric’s out…”

Hm, a reasonable assumption, given what had made his shadows fade away. Giving up on going back to sleep, Pride rolled onto his other side, glancing in her general direction, unable to see a thing.

“Must be the storm. It’ll be back soon. Please don’t be scared.”

“Still not scared…!” She squeaked.

“Then what’s the matter? Please tell me.” Perhaps she was getting homesick.

“You won’t be my friend anymore if I tell you. Can’t tell you…” Her voice muffled, she must have been drenching his pillows with her senseless tears. “If he dies they won’t need me anymore… Mother’ll send me back There…I c-can’t go back there…”

_Hm, send her where?_

Pride said nothing, trying to sift through her drowsy babble. The darkness and his natural _vulnerability_ gnawed at him, sending pinpricks of nervousness along his container’s skin. No matter. If he had remained asleep without Rosalie pestering him this would not have bothered him in the least, so why should he care now?

“Rosalie…”

“It’s Jude, he-he’s sick…Mother sent me here so I wouldn’t see him...like that…”

The whisper of a worry scratched faint in his mind. If Jude were to die from his vague illness, he would have wasted these past few days on the useless human child, for an equally useless Sacrifice, a worthless pawn in their plans.

But Rosalie was a mere child; she could be mistaken about the severity of his illness. Pride clung to that thought tightly in the unrelieved darkness that nestled between them.

“I am your friend, Rosalie, and it’s ok. I won’t let them send you away.”

“Y-You promise, cross your heart?” Her feeble, yearning whimper barely broke over the sound of the rain.

“Yeah, cross my heart.” He did the looping motion over his chest, but she’d never see it. “It’s all right. Please don’t cry… go back to sleep.”

They remained distant, but with more reassuring whispers, Rosalie’s stifled weeping quietened down, until she slipped into a light sleep. _Finally_. Pride thought about wrapping himself in his quilt and thinking no more about it, but knew it would be weird for Rosalie to be found out of bed, especially considering the blackout.

With some minor difficulty Pride hoisted her onto his back, arms hooked under her knees. Though she was a tad shorter than his container, his posture sank marginally as he carried her, the container no stronger than the child it resembled in the pitch darkness. Groggily, she mumbled something close to his ear. It might have been ‘thank you’, but Pride ignored her. This wasn’t _for_ her.

The rain slowed as he tiptoed out into the hall. Pride peered through a window, the black clouds dispersed a tad, like so many little black sheep plodding through the sky. He did not dwell on it and hurried as silently as he could towards her room.

The sooner he got Rosalie back into her own bed, the sooner he could go back to sleep.

* * *

Pride chomped down on his toast with a grin, while Mother helped Rosalie in securing her own piece of bread to the fork, holding it close to the fireplace (but not too close). He sat beside them on the floor, watching the fire and enjoying the lazy excess of still wearing his pyjamas, bathing in the clouded daylight of the New Year.

In the spirit of the occasion, Mother let them oversleep past noon. Though perhaps it was not merely her motherly indulgence, rather her desire to avoid any disruptions the blackout had caused. No such luck, and the loss of electricity persisted throughout Central.

Having spent the majority of his life without the _wonders_ of electricity, the crisp, smoky aftertaste from toast made this way was a familiar one. The abundance of butter softened it pleasantly in the middle, too. A viscous drop dribbled out the corner of his mouth, which he dabbed with his napkin.

“Don’t worry, Mrs. Bradley. I – um – I’ve done this before.”

Something wistful flickered in her eyes. The girl took to it almost _too_ well. Pride wondered where she could have learned such a thing; a family such as hers could surely afford a toaster. Her mother could be old fashioned, he supposed.

Following breakfast, and with a bellyful of toast, Pride dressed into his New Year’s clothes – the grey waistcoat and short trousers. Rosalie stepped into his bedroom a few minutes later, having likewise donned her new grey dress. Its pleated edges gave her far more room to move than her regular attire.

“Mrs. Bradley said these’re for later.” She said, holding up two bundles of foil in one hand. Pride knew them to be the leftover turkey from the night before. Given the time, breakfast and lunch were almost combined, so they could save the turkey sandwiches for a snack after they’d played for a while.

“What’s the rest of the foil for?” He asked, noticing the thin roll of tinfoil in her spare hand. Why had Mother given her that?

“Oh, this? I dunno, guess it’s in case we need to wrap the sandwiches more to keep ‘em cold.” Thankfully, the plethora of ice in the cellar’s icebox had kept the turkey unscathed despite the power outage.

Rosalie flicked at the useless light switch, leaving it set to ‘On’.

“Shame the power’s still out. Do you think Mr. Edward might come and fix it? I bet he could.”

“No, maybe an alchemist can fix it, but it won’t be him.” Pride said with a glum undercurrent, for surely he should be concerned about his dear missing Tiny Alchemist. It was possible Rosalie didn’t know of the brothers’ recent, perilous adventures.

“I guess he’ll be at home with his family for New Year.”

“Maybe. A while ago Mr. Edward and Mr. Alphonse went to the north, and no one knows what’s happened to them after that. I hope they’re ok…”

“That’s awful!” Rosalie covered her mouth, almost hitting herself in the face with the tube. “They were so kind when they visited me. I’m sure they’re just having so much fun up in the north…”

She spent far too long digesting the information, as if it was some enormous secret he had kept from her the past few days. The girl paced in front of his bed, tapping her chin, until she stopped abruptly and turned to him.

“Ooh, Selim, I have an idea!” She grinned and glowed at whatever bright idea she had concocted, its brightness almost enough to bring light to the dull room.

Stepping out of her shoes, Rosalie leapt onto the bed and rolled out the foil. Curious, Pride kicked off his expensive loafers and joined her, crossing his legs.

What could she have in mind this time?

* * *

The harsh, indifferent wind ripped through the Briggs mountain range with a howl. It bent the boughs of the scattered evergreen trees, and drowned any creature foolish enough to tread upon the mountainside in a flurry of snow and ice, be it a rabbit or fox in their permanent winter coats, or a pair of daring and very lost alchemists.

Edward’s coat fluttered in the wind, a drop of red in the white abyss that swallowed everything. Briefly, he entertained the idea of crawling into his little brother’s armour to shield him, but disregarded the thought with a frozen huff of a breath. This was nothing he couldn’t handle, of course.

“C-Can barely see a thing in this blizzard. Stay close to me, Al.”

“Yes, Brother.” His hollow sibling’s voice issued from the metal. He trailed behind him with light steps.

The duo, insensible to the forbidding gusts, continued traversing the snowfield without any sense of direction. Eventually, the teen’s stubbornness could not prevent the frigid air from bleeding deep, deep into his clothes, and then into his pale but pinking skin, and sharp touches of frost began to coat his automail. Ed’s heavy footfalls slowed, until he collapsed into a snow bank, shuddering. His faithful little brother sank down beside him.

“Are you ok, Brother?”

Despite Alphonse’s _current state,_ the teen felt a twitch of envy that he needn’t endure this terrible chill, and then a belated stab of guilt.

“Not sure, Al. My feet are all numb. Just our luck, right?” Ed coughed out a short laugh at their misfortune. “Why’d we come up here again?”

“It doesn’t look good.” Alphonse did not answer his question, like he no longer remembered why, or perhaps never had. “Seems like frostbite, your leg must be frozen solid. It’ll have to come off!”

“You can’t! C’mon, Al, there has to be _something._ Aren’t we some of the best alchemists around? I’ll think of somethin’ to fix my leg, I know it.” He clapped for good measure, scheming up a solution.

“Maybe you shouldn’t.” The armoured boy warned him. “That sounds like...Human Transmutation to me, and that’d be bad!”

For a moment the hissing wind was silenced, until the words sank in.

_Human…_

_Human Transmutation…!?_

Pride snapped out of their make-believing, the snowy Briggs Mountains melting back into his creased bedcover.

Despite his apparent ‘frostbite’, he managed to sit up, staring up at Rosalie with a slight suspicious narrowing of his eyes.

“How do you know… about that kinda stuff?”

“Erm--” Rosalie’s own wide eyes darted about, as if scrambling for an excuse. “Aren’t those the rules of alchemy, to not make gold or people? Isn’t that Human Transmutation? Does doing alchemy on a living person count as that?”

Pride studied her for a moment. If Rosalie knew of the taboo, it only added credence to the rumour of Jude performing Human Transmutation. Naturally, she could not admit something like that to him outright, given his ‘father’s’ position, and if such were true they had very real means of incarcerating him for it. Despite the girl’s no doubt hyperbolic concerns of Jude being sick, once Dr. Marcoh was returned to them, he could easily remedy the problem.

“No, we have medical alchemy and stuff that we can use to help people, or lesser forms like alkahestry.”

Lying back down, Pride glanced over their already tattering costumes. No intrepid brothers of fullmetal were they, more like tin, given the tinfoil in which they now cloaked themselves. The silver strips shimmered in their neat coils over Pride’s arm and leg, whereas Rosalie had folded hers around her headband, ending in spike a more befitting a unicorn. A piece of string tied to it served as Alphonse’s ‘hair’, and the plush square cushion from his reading chair was secured with one of his belts around her stomach. Rosalie assured him she needed it to properly look like a suit of armour. It was _some_ kind of armour, to be sure.

He didn’t know what to make of her game of dress up, though rather amused by her ability to utilise such mundane objects to suit her imagination. Less mundane was the silver pocket watch tucked into his waistcoat, yesterday used to keep tabs on Wrath’s time tampering, today as a prop in their games.

Mother thought Wrath had given him the watch as a gift in anticipation for when he grew up and learned alchemy. She thought it only a replica, but minute, barely noticeable differences betrayed it as the _prototype_ , created when the concept of State Alchemist was first conceived, bringing prospective Human Sacrifices to their attention and under their control.

“Alkahestry? What’s that?” She asked, still herself, with her wide, inquisitive eyes.

“Oh, it’s some kind of alchemy from Xing that specialises in healing, or something. Mr. Alphonse said he was studying it when I met him. I don’t know _why_ though, seems kinda lame. Amestris’s alchemy’s already the best, and if alkahestry was so good, why has no one heard of it?” Pride coolly dismissed the concept of it, defending the perfect, glorious alchemy that created him. Not that it _needed_ defending from the useless and pathetic alchemy of the East.

“I guess so. Jude’s never mentioned anything about it, either. Oh, anyway...” Rosalie stiffened up, back into the game, once more the hollow, bigger little brother Alphonse. “So no doing alchemy to fix your leg.”

“If we can’t do that, you’d better just cut it off and be done with it…” Pride relented with a blasé sigh incongruous with the concept of a mountainside amputation. In the course of their playful theatrics, any drastic damage to the brothers was negligible.

She shook her head sadly.

“I can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

Rosalie pulled her sleeves over her hands, waving the flaps of cloth with a whine.

“Because I-I’ve already cut my _arms_ off!”

“Why’d you do that?!” No questions of _how_. “Armour can’t get frostbite. Here--” With the barest brush of his fingers Pride ‘clapped’ and pulled her hands back out. “Now your arms are back, so hurry up and-- make me even shorter…!” He crossed his arms over his face, teeth gritted, suddenly ever so worried, but putting on a braver face for his younger sibling.

The homunculus bobbed along on the waves of his façade, feeling the complicated mix of expected emotions dragging him down. Here he lay, pretending to be a normal human boy, and then said human boy pretending to be the object of his admiration, Edward Elric. No precious _Human Sacrifice_ , no. An act within an act, but still effortless in every way.

“Well, you _are_ quite short …”

“Who are you calling so small they can get impaled by a snowflake!? Call me short again and you’ll be on a trip to Neptune, little brother!”

Rosalie flinched a little at his outburst, and he softened. Maybe she didn’t know _that_ much about the Elrics, really?

“Sorry, Edward gets real mad if you call him short.” He explained in a tone more remorseful than he felt.

“Oh? Sorry, guess I’m not so good at this…”

“N-No, this is just a game; we don’t have to be exactly like them. Maybe me as Edward doesn’t have a little brother, maybe a sister instead! Al…Alice?”

Rosalie brightened at the suggestion.

“Sounds good. Alice Elric – Armour Weirdo!” She proclaimed with a flourish. “Has a nice ring to it, right? Now, about this leg…let me see…” The girl bent down to inspect his ‘frostbitten’ leg. Strangely, she leaned over the foil-covered one, tapping at it. “Oh, it was your automail leg all along! Oops!” She giggled, brushing the crisis aside without a thought. “C’mon, now that the blizzard’s stopped, we might be able to make it to the peak before morning!”

“Perfect, let me just get all this frost off my automail.” Pride pushed up, and with a series of loud, overdramatic claps, melted the ice, faintly touching the creased foil on his arm and leg. Rosalie grabbed his arm mid-clap.

“Stop. Do you hear that?” She asked, pushing up and down on the balls of her feet, shaking the mattress as if to evoke a deep rumbling.

He shook his head. The girl pottered off to the top of the bed, bending down and fidgeting with something.

“Oh no!” She cried out. Pride inched closer.

“What is i-”

Rosalie whipped around and whacked him with a pillow. His container overbalanced at the shock, falling with an inaudible thump.

“It’s an avalanche! W-Watch out!”

More pillows followed, serving as the hurtling snow blankets, sweeping them away. After a while, once Pride had clutched a pillow for himself, the avalanche broke down into an impromptu pillow fight, until at last the brunette child threw her headband off somewhere as she toppled over.

“Aahh, my head!” She wailed, scooping up all pillows and arranging them until they covered her completely from the neck down.

“You all right, Alice?”

“My head fell off… can you get it for me?” She must’ve meant her headband. While Pride hopped off the bed and located it, she called to him, “Mr. Alphonse is hollow, you know? He can move around even though he’s just some armour!”

Maybe she knew more about the brothers than she let on.

“Y-Yeah.” He replied somewhat shakily. Though Pride had known of the younger Elric’s hollowness for a while, he had not considered if his façade knew, given the implications of such a peculiar body. Even so, Rosalie must have considered it common knowledge, so he pushed it from his mind.

“I knew you knew it already. You know everything about them.” She beamed, laughing a little as he slipped her headband back on. “But, oh…the snow’s all stuck inside my armour. I can’t move…!”

“I’ll melt the snow with alchemy.”

“You can’t, that might damage me somehow. Besides, if you make more noise there could be another avalanche.”

“I can…make a signal or something, with Morse code.”

“That’s the same problem…”

“Then…” Pride faltered. He didn’t know what she wanted of him. How could she explain away his own problems, yet make up every excuse for why he could not help her? He frowned, grasping for…something, anything.

“It’s no use, just leave me.” She whispered. “Save yourself while you can. I’ll be fine here for a while, maybe.” Her voice quavered as she turned away, looking so forlorn and helpless beneath the insignificant weight of the pillows.

“I won’t leave, I’m right here.” He cried, grasping her hands, the tinfoil crinkling further at the force of it. “Don’t you worry, lil’ sister, I won’t let you die. I won’t…!” Pride tugged at her, Rosalie so entrenched in her hopelessness she did not help at all while he laboured with dragging her upright, and then to her feet. Her long grey socks suited her supposed appearance as being just a suit of armour quite well, and their combined weight barely made a dip in the mattress.

“Thank you so much, Big Brother; I don’t know what I would have done without you!” Rosalie mimed taking her breastplate off and scooped the congested snow out.

_Big Brother…_

The words lingered in the fake, frigid air.

Rosalie uttered it so sincerely, fully in their game. She didn’t speak it with great respect as Lust addressed him, nor the childish way his more foolish siblings would call after him, but the sound of it, to be called brother again by _anyone_ …

A strange haze clouded up Pride’s purple eyes, and despite his best efforts he could not quash the bizarre relief inside him. They were only playing, what should it matter that he had ‘saved’ his little sister from being buried in the snow? It meant nothing either way. Pride thought no more about it, ignoring the stranger warmth the relief left in its wake, welling within him.

The duo continued their ‘adventure’, braving the snow and wind and the threat of a bear attack, breaking through the haze of the snow-filled clouds and up to the very peak. Rosalie gasped in awe, painting the scene for him.

“Aha, finally! The summit!” She sighed. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

“Yeah…” He squinted, trying to imagine the clear and bright blue sky that must have existed atop Mt. Briggs. One day, Pride decided, he would see it for himself, stand in the thick snow above all things in this world (except Father) and observe such beautiful vistas unfit for human eyes.

“We’re at the top of the whole world up here! Hellooo!” She yelled behind her cupped hands, in no fear of falling prey to another avalanche, listening to it echo and shiver down the mountain.

The dormant light bulb burst into life, its white artificial light washing over them, so sudden Pride winced and covered his eyes. The power was back…

“And what a perfect sunrise!” Rosalie didn’t miss a beat, implementing anything and everything into her game.

“Perfect…” He said while he rubbed the sunspots from his eyes.

“Something’s coming… I’ll check it out.” She leapt off the bed and disappeared from view. Pride waited, seeing her lift the cover at the foot of the bed, and the small blob of her beneath it inched along to him. What was she doing now?

The brunette burst from under the cover, and shrieked out something he thought might have been an attempt at a roar as she pushed up onto her tiptoes. The quilt raised itself up around her like the mouth of a tiny cave.

“It is I, Yock-Ness Monster.” The girl boomed in a deep, slow voice. A moment later she whispered out in her real voice, “The Monster talks, by the way.”

This _again?_

Pride quirked his thin eyebrow at the random re-emergence of Rosalie’s fascination with the mythical Monster of Yock Island. Had she taken his offhand suggestion that the Monster had gone to the North to heart?

“Thank you for waking me up from my winter nap, without that avalanche I would have overslept for certain.” The child hopped up and down in time with her words, the quilt flopping above her head. Pride realised that it was meant to be the Monster’s mouth as it ‘spoke’. “I have to get back to Dublith now– all my animal friends will be needing me.”

Though Pride had seen the ‘Monster’ for himself that day, the homunculus could imagine only Envy’s True Form in front of him. Ugly, cobbled together Envy. Something flitted across his mind, almost nostalgic.

“So, again, thank you Alpho--I mean, _Alice_ Elric and… I can’t make you out very well…Edward, is it?”

She paused to let him acknowledge the leading barb. Oh, his ‘cue’, of sorts.

“Who you calling too small to see?!”

“Calm yourself, Tiny Alchemist!” She bellowed, adopting his nickname for the boy. “I _am_ still a monster, y’know. I care not about how short you may or may not be. To me, like all tiny humans, you are small. Now climb up on my back while I’m in a good mood, I will take you down the mountain!”

Rosalie let the quilt drop, returning to his side. She bowed low towards the empty space.

“Thank you, Mr. Yock-Ness Monster!” Rosalie motioned for him to do the same, and humouring her some more, he bowed at the imagined shape of the monster.

“We appreciate it.”

“And now.” Rosalie gripped his non-automail hand. She was warm. Not like cold, hollow Alphonse. Not like him. “Down the mountain we go, Big Brother! C’mon!”

She dragged him out the door, along the corridors, turning sharply around corners, going round in circles sometimes. Pride almost tripped (“N-Not so rough, Mr. Monster!” her cry echoed off the walls), but he regained his footing, and her hand stayed clasped to his. Rosalie just smiled her rambunctious smile, calling him Big Brother again, and that odd warmth flickered at the sound of it.

They arrived atop the stairway in the foyer, at the polished mahogany banister that led downstairs. The child hooked her leg over one side, slipping down the rail with a delighted shout. Some of the servants down below glanced at them, but said nothing.

“You next. It’ll take a few tries to make it aaall the way down the mountain!”

Flashing a wide grin at her, Pride slid down the banister, the warm rush of a breeze combing through his hair in the fleeting seconds before he had to push up over the end of the banister, and land squarely on his feet, before starting over. The homunculus considered whether, in the context of their imaginings, this was the monster sliding down the mountain with them in tow, or if they were sliding down the back of the monster itself. Perhaps both.

Once or twice Rosalie toppled over, protected by the pillow on her front and sliding a little. While Pride rushed back up the stairs, two at a time, he considered if she had planned this from the start, hence the necessity of the ‘pillow armour’.

This time, what became the final time, Pride didn’t _quite_ stick the landing, pitching over the edge of the banister and flat onto his stomach in an undignified heap. Rosalie followed a second later without any issue, knees bent slightly and arms out at her sides. His container’s very ordinary teeth jolted as he struck the wood, biting his tongue.

“Ow…” The minute damage healed without a spark, and yet Pride found himself unable to stand straight away. Even in the wake of their games, such physical exertion within his container was not commonplace, with no other children to play for, and Pride lay for a moment longer until he had settled.

“W-We made it! We really did, Al!” He cried breathlessly. It was ‘Al’ once more, it seemed.

She didn’t say anything, but celebrated with a little twirl with her arms outstretched. He couldn’t imagine the armour boy doing such a thing, but it didn’t matter.

“Mind your volume, children.”

Rosalie tensed, turning her head towards the voice. Pride watched Wrath stride further into the foyer, his uncovered eye trained on them.

Wrath must have returned from visiting the innumerable homes of Central’s darling populace, serving as their First Visitor, if they had not previously ‘cheated’ like them. While the heads of the household would venture out to visit other families, the women and children remained home to receive said visitors. Luckily, their residence within Headquarters prevented the sea of unwelcome guests.

“I’m sorry, Father,” Pride bleated, still catching his breath. “We were just playing.”

“And causing a racket, too, it seems,” His actual little brother glared down at him with a mocking twitch of a smirk under his moustache, “and you’ve ruined your new clothes.”

Pride cringed at how he must have looked from up there, sprawled on the floor, his perfect outfit scruffy and scuffed, covered in foil from his childish costume. Any other time he would have shot to his feet and mustered whatever dignity he could salvage, but now the weight of their physical disparity lingered heavy between them, and combined with his undignified position and Rosalie’s presence beside them, it pinned him down.

“This isn’t like you, Selim. I know you’re having fun showing off to your new friend, but you’re not too old to be put over my knee, my boy.”

“Father, please, you’re embarrassing me…” His cheeks burned at the shame of it, he squirmed miserably, to not only be on the receiving end of his little brother’s self-indulgent scolding, but the need to degrade this part of himself further in font of Rosalie. Maybe Wrath would use his ‘misbehaving’ to send her home prematurely, sabotage their plans even further. He trembled once more at the thought.

Part of him quietly schemed to show Wrath his place at the nearest opportunity, but to pursue it later was another petty indignity he must rise above. He must not sink to such, as if he could. He was Pride, after all.

Wrath’s boisterous, hidden smirk was hidden further by a small grey blob as he watched Rosalie step between them, blocking his irritating sibling from him.

“Please don’t blame Selim, Your Excellency. It wasn’t his fault. It was the Monster, he was too steep!”

Pride watched, stunned at her boldness. His mouth would have fallen open had his chin not been on the floor already. What was she doing? If Wrath could exploit his exuberant games as an excuse to get rid of Rosalie, such insolence from the girl would only ensure it. He saw her tremble in Wrath’s shadow, as if realising her mistake of daring to stand up to the führer in his own home, yet still she stood resolute between them, defending him. What had she to gain from this?

The silence stretched, and stretched.

Rosalie must have seen something he did not, as her trembles all at once became a giggling fit. She must have caught the coming laughter in his uncovered eye.

“‘ _The Monster was too steep_!’“ Wrath chuckled in his hearty, noisy, overdone way that showed his teeth, befitting his sporadic bouts of eccentricity. “You have quite the imagination, young lady, and a good deal of grit, I must say.”

The girl and Wrath laughed together for a moment longer,

“Thank you, Your Excellency.”

The eldest exhaled slowly, almost a sigh, rather grateful that Wrath had chosen to humour the girl. Having caught his breath, he succeeded in finding his feet and dusted himself off. Wrath’s smirk seemed less sardonic now, his calloused hand rested on his head, tousling his already messed up hair.

“I knew you could pick them well, Selim, comes with the Bradley name, my boy! Well, boys will be boys; it’s nice to see you enjoying yourself so much. You two have fun now.” With that, Wrath let them be. He strode off in his even, rehearsed gait, still quietly chuckling to himself.

“Th-Thank you… for, you know.” He said to her. The words came easier than expected, but it still burned his throat, enough to choke him.

Rosalie waved it off.

“I-It was nothing…” She fixed her askew headband, readjusting the tinfoil horn. “Anyway, let’s go, there’s some turkey with our names on it upstairs, after all!”

She took his hand again, and Pride let her drag him back upstairs.

Pride only _let_ her, no reciprocation.

He was still only playing along with her whims, obviously.

* * *

“Did you have fun then, Selim?”

“Yep!”

“And the _oh-so-steep_ Monster?”

“He went home, I suppose.”

Pride sat beside Wrath, at a true ease tonight, no irrational jealously broiling inside him (if it had ever been, which it had _not_ ). Mother guided Rosalie through the necessary loops with the needles, enthralled in their knitting and chatting quietly.

Wrath spoke of his own interesting excursions that day. It seemed Radio Central had taken the utmost advantage of the blackout, taking the musicians they hired for the occasion out into the street outside the radio station to perform live, sweeping the district up in New Year’s cheer. Radio Capital, ever playing catch-up in this – as they did all things – attempted the same, but the führer having not deigned to grace _them_ with his presence, no one cared.

“We were lucky enough to have His Excellency Führer Bradley pay us a visit during today’s outdoor ‘broadcast’, just as the electricity was restored.” The sound cut to a pre-recorded clip, no doubt from that afternoon.

“Thank you so much for visiting us here at Radio Central, Your Excellency. Is there anything you would like to say?”

“I would like to wish a Happy New Year to my beautiful wife, Lucille, our son Selim, and our lovely guest, Rosalie, who is staying with us. And, of course, each and every one of my citizens here in Amestris. I hope the New Year finds you all well.”

Quite the perfunctory message, but for the final New Year’s broadcast Amestris would ever get to hear it was adequate, and Pride secretly relished in the mention, hearing his human name on the radio. No doubt many families were also listening and thinking of the führer’s family, his precious son, wishing them a prosperous New Year in return.

Mother thanked Wrath for having devised such a nice surprise for them, but at the mention of _her_ name Rosalie couldn’t muster a word, blushing and babbling something to Mother. Eventually she calmed, and went back to knitting.

“Your mother said she hasn’t seen a peep of you all day after breakfast. What did I tell you? I knew you and Rosalie would be inseparable before too long.” Wrath teased him, no doubt picking up on his ease in its contrast to the night before.

“Stop it, Father, that’s embarrassing.” He laughed a boyish laugh, but they exchanged their circumspect glances beneath his pinking cheeks.

_Shut up, Wrath._

Mother stood, motioning for Rosalie to pack her knitting material up.

“It’s nearly bedtime, dears. Come, let’s get you two ready for bed.”

Relieved that he needn’t placate his brother any longer, Pride shuffled off the couch, joining her and Rosalie.

“What were you knitting?” He asked her.

“A scarf, but it’s gonna take a while. It’s gonna be pretty and blue like this,” She poked at the blue line of a trim on her collar, the bright shade of blue they had both worn all the days prior, the blue that lined the hem of her dress.

“Mother’s a good teacher, I’m sure it’ll turn out perfect, Rosalie.”

Pride encouraged the girl, and hopefully with such gentle encouragement fresh in her mind before she went to sleep, Rosalie would stay in her _own_ bed and _not_ come crying to him again that night. Needing to carry her again sounded like such a bother, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hehe, Rosalie got them common folk bread toasting and costume crafting skills from her life being poor, but shh, it's a secret!
> 
> I wanted to draw a picture of Pride and Rosalie in their Ed and Al 'costumes', but this chapter grew out of control so I had no time ^^;
> 
> You know, for as long as I've been in the fandom, this is the first time I've ever written Ed and Al. Even if it isn't really them, it kinda counts. A quick note, in their games, Rosalie would be using nii-san like Al does, whereas Lust would probably have used onii-sama to talk to Pride, as she uses otou-sama for Father (though Pride uses chichi-ue).
> 
> I imagine Pride was annoyed when he met Alphonse talking about alkahestry in the library, and doesn't like it. He makes a big point in saying that Amestris is already the best at alchemy and asking why the Elrics are bothering with a minor alchemy from other country. Obviously with Amestrian alchemy being controlled by Father, and himself being born from it, I think Pride would be protective of it and dislike other forms of it, especially alkahestry created by Hohenheim.
> 
> Phew, thank you for reading this. I'll be probably taking a week off again to get some stuff written for the Rarepair, but any reviews and things are loved, as ever :)


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the delay guys, there was the rarepair (I got 2 oneshots done, please check them out if you like) and then I had a convention last weekend.
> 
> Time for Rosalie’s penultimate day with the family~ please enjoy the chapter.
> 
> And fma, still not mine.

_Rosalie…_

Something called her, the voice faint, seeming so far away. Not worth her notice, though. She kept curled beneath the cover, easing into a fainter sleep.    

_Rosalie…_

Something poked at her shoulder, maybe, breaking into her dream, pulling her more awake. Rosalie batted lazily at it with a whine, wishing it’d leave her alone, whatever it was.

“Wake up, Rosalie! C’mon, get up!” The mattress shook, like someone…jumping on it? “We’re going on a picnic!”

The something dragged the quilt right off her.

Wearily opening her eyes, Rosalie watched what was certainly Selim’s blurry shape keep bouncing, far more effective compared to her similar efforts. She blinked. What had gotten into him? Before when she’d threatened to oversleep he’d only knocked, after all. He could have been trying to cheer her up, she thought, since she’d admitted Jude’s sickness to him, and wanted to distract her from her worrying. Though Rosalie had avoided any specifics, Selim’s determination and his promise to stop her being thrown back _there_ made her smile a little.

Wrapping the quilt around him like a cape, Selim wandered over to the window, and let it drop as he threw the curtains open. Thick, falling snow cast dotty shadows over him, making her shiver a little, or maybe that was just the sudden lack of her quilt.

“Told you it’d snow! Finally…” The boy flashed her a wide, toothy grin.

“Two days late, though.” Rosalie pushed herself up and yawned, stretching out as far as her nightie would allow, caught under her.

“I never said _when_ it would snow.” The boy pottered back with the cover, laying it at the foot of the bed. “Anyway, hurry up and get ready, so we can have breakfast and stuff, and then we can go!”

“You hafta get ready, too, you know!” Rosalie pointed at his pyjamas and his short dressing gown. “And don’t forget the football!” She called as he scurried away, shutting the door on his way out.

Alone again, Rosalie smoothed out her quilt and sat squarely in the middle of the bed, legs crossed. She’d get him back for this somehow, bursting in and ruining her nice sleep like this. The girl knew she’d done the exact same thing to him those two days before, but that hardly mattered. _That_ was for something important like New Year’s Eve, this was _completely_ different.

But first, she’d better get her clothes ready. She pushed her plotting aside for the moment, no matter how urgent her playful revenge.

Later, after breakfast had passed without incident (or vengeance), Rosalie and Selim perched at the bottom of the staircase, waiting patiently for Mrs. Bradley to return from the kitchen. No sliding down the banister on the Monster’s back today, though. Rosalie doubted she could manage it, anyway, back in her tighter, ordinary dress.

“Ooh, and then after football, we can build a snowman!” Selim suggested.

Rosalie glanced over at him while he bounced the football in place with two hands, his giddiness persisting. The boy had dressed in his winter coat of a bold, dark blue similar to Amestris’s military uniforms, two fluffy white bobbles swaying from his furred collar. His hair fell over his eyes slightly, pushed down by a matching hat decorated with similar bobbles on top and on the sides.

“Why don’t we make one first, so it can play football, too?” She looked down at her own winter coat, the same mossy shade as her eyes, trimmed with a soft white on the arms and neck. Rosalie un-tucked her ribbon and let it hang over her coat. No need for it to get too creased under it, and the pink and green complimented each other, as Mother had told her when they’d bought it.

“Sure. Let’s just hope we won’t be too full after the picnic.” He said, somewhat wryly, as if embarrassed to be thinking of food again so soon after breakfast. “I bet Mother prepared all sorts of things for us yesterday once the power came back.”

Rosalie didn’t blame him though, that was one of the points of a picnic of course.

A firm knock echoed out from the front door, disturbing their quiet but excited chatter. With no Mrs. Bradley to answer it, after a moment a servant strode towards the door, letting in a young woman.

Selim shot to his feet so fast it felt like a breeze brushed at her hair. Forgetting his manners, the boy dashed forward. Rosalie pushed up and followed him.

“Hello there, Lieutenant!” He called, throwing away all his usual soft-spoken politeness.

The woman did not react with any great emotion, slowing her steps as they met in the middle of the room.

“Good morning, Selim.” She looked over his outfit. “Are you going on an outing?”

“Yup, we’re off to Central Park for a picnic.”

Selim turned back to her, as if remembering she was right next to him.

“Oh, Rosalie, this is Miss Hawkeye. She’s a First Lieutenant, and my father’s personal aide.”

The girl inched closer, offering her hand for a grown-up kind of meeting, especially meeting someone who got to be around the führer so much.

“Nice to meet you, Miss Hawkeye. I’m Rosalie.”

“It’s nice to meet you, too, Rosalie.” The woman smiled, indulging her. “The führer tells me that you’ve been staying here for a few days.”

“Yeah, but I’m going home tomorrow.” The girl paused, as if only realising it herself for the first time. The week had flown by so quickly.

Bouncing on the balls of his feet, Selim happily interrupted the silence again.

“Miss Hawkeye, did you have a fun New Year?”

“Yes, despite having no electricity. Rather cosy, actually.”

Rosalie noted how easily the boy talked to the older woman. Maybe Miss Hawkeye and Selim were sorta friends. If he had been isolated from others his age, the adults that visited his home could become his friends instead. Rosalie thought of herself and Jude, was that the same thing?

“I bet you had a lucky First Visitor, too. Did you know it’s the best luck if the first visitor’s a man with black hair?”

“I think I have heard something of it.”

“Did you get a visitor like that yet?” He grinned, a mischievous glint in his eye, though Rosalie didn’t know why. “I wouldn’t want you to get bad luck for the _whole year_ …but if not, maybe I could visit you!”

“Oh, there is no need to worry about me.” Miss Hawkeye said, completely confident. “Well, I must not keep the führer waiting, so I must leave you. It was nice meeting you, Rosalie. Please enjoy yourself, and be careful.”

Hm, careful over what? Obviously they were gonna wait until the snow had fully stopped before leaving, right? The woman looked down at her, something faint beneath her kind brown eyes, but Rosalie didn’t understand it, or what it could mean.

“I promise to be extra, _extra_ careful, Miss Hawkeye.” Rosalie did her very best to assure the lady, beaming, hoping it would be enough. “Besides, Selim will be there too, to keep an eye on me.”

“Yep!”

 “Yes, I know you will, Selim.”

They watched her leave, but Rosalie still didn’t understand what she had meant.

Oh well. Her strange looks couldn’t be more important than their picnic, after all.

* * *

 Their complete and solitary snowman watched over them like a sentinel with its black pebble eyes, commanding more of a presence than the numerous bodyguards dotted around while they failed to remain out of sight. Their black suits stood as a dark blight on the calm blue and white around them. Pride tried to forget about them, pretending it was just the three (or four) of them, enjoying a cosy picnic together in the perfect, serene snow.

At last, the earth and the frigid air once again matched the abyss of his insides. In actuality, Pride’s body was neither hot nor cold, it simply _was,_ but having experienced true warmth, the eldest longed for it, and he relished in the tiny, feigned warmth that formed as his container shivered. He nuzzled deeper into his winter coat and nibbled at his chicken croquette.

The snowman’s head sat a little lopsided from its little _accident_ regarding Rosalie kicking their football straight at its face in their games _._ They hastily set its head back onto its body before dashing from the travesty of their ‘crime’, at least until Mother called them back. The girl was still gushing at his impeccable skills, as if she hadn’t _believed_ him. Very few had ever witnessed them and lived long enough to gush at all, and Pride merely soaked up the praise.

Rosalie said they should have dressed the snowman as a means of apology, lamenting over her unfinished scarf, still in her room. The plethora of picnic treats quickly stole her attention, and having finished her own croquette, the girl leaned over to grasp a small plain biscuit or two.

“Do you think you could show me how to bake things like this, Mrs. Bradley?” She took a tiny bite; some crumbs clung to her gloves. “They’re all so awesome, I wanna make ‘em when I’m back home.”

“I’m sure we will make time for it, Rosalie.” Mother said warmly behind her lemon tart. The eldest, remembering _why_ he longed for the winter chill, smiled to himself. Soon he would nestle close to her, and bask in that warmth, too.

But not yet, with so much left to see on their outing. Rosalie had _specifically_ asked to visit the park during her stay, and Pride could see her fidgeting beside him, eager to discover everything there was to find in the park. Though Central Park had been created as merely a means of providing some greenery in the industrious capital, even for a countryside girl like Rosalie, where greenery was abundant, there was probably something interesting to discover.

“Mother, please can we go exploring a little?” Pride asked very sweetly as he finished eating, dabbing his mouth with a napkin.

“You may, but don’t go past the lake, and please _try_ to stay in sight, dears.”

Rosalie dragged him off, kicking up powdery clouds as she went. They passed by several other humans picnicking, thankfully without any children among them, probably playing somewhere. Pride wondered where her ever inquisitive mind was going to lead her, and for him to follow and play along.

“Hm? What’s that?” She stopped so abruptly he bumped into her, but she didn’t notice. The girl squatted down on her haunches, dragging her fingers over the snow, layer by layer. She dug out a pair of bright green and blue, rounded feathers. They had snapped near the top, and as Rosalie held it up the thin bases split and fell away.

“Ooh, peacock feathers, look!” Rosalie chirped, and handed one to him.

“Thank you. This’ll be perfect for my scrapbook.” Pride accepted the feather, regarding it closely. As humans often described it, the wide drop in the centre did somewhat resemble an eye. “I guess the peacock passed through here. Maybe we’ll be lucky enough to see it.” He referred to the bird as _the_ peacock, as only two peafowl resided in the park.

A few years before, several peafowl had been gifted to Central from Xing. A certain pair decided the zoo did not suit them, and absconded into Central Park. As the eastern country did not serve any kind of purpose in Father’s Plans, they did not attempt to incite discord between Amestris and Xing by injuring the birds, and thus the elegant creatures now considered the park their home.

“Wow, there really is a peacock here, and it just roams wherever it wants?”

“I guess so. If it wasn’t happy here it would just fly away, wouldn’t it?” He tucked the plume carefully into his coat pocket. 

“Do their big tails not get in the way?” Humans were always so captivated by its excessive ‘train’ of tail feathers. No doubt the male had lost these feathers from being pursued by some human. The concept of interacting with such an exotic bird kept the population happy as well, if nothing else.

“Only the boy one has big tail feathers, but they can fly ok over short distances.”

“Ohh, stop knowing everything…!” She teased him, holding up her feather to the weak, winter sunlight. “Oh, Central Park Peacock…I wanna see him. So, we’re gonna buy some food for the birds and hand feed ‘em! They say Central Park’s full of pretty songbirds…”

“Oh, tons. I bet there’re things like goldfinches, blue tits, robins…” Pride recalled birds he had never seen in anyway resembling close, but he could still think of their vivid illustrations in his books, the most _effective_ method of studying.

When Pride was young and alone, he tried approaching several birds and beasts, desiring to observe and study them as he had so many humans, but they always fled, and if he drew too near they lashed out at him in their fright. They could never hope to damage him, and they were beneath his contempt in any case.

“What?” Rosalie asked, covering her mouth. Her shoulders shook for a reason he couldn’t determine.

“Robins?”

“No, the other one.”

“…Blue tits?”

The girl hid more barely concealed giggles behind her hands, her frozen breath pouring out.

“You can’t-- say that, Selim!” She gasped in the pauses between her childish titters.

_Oh._

“H-H-Hey!” The boy cried, flushing in dismay, as any human child would at being caught saying a ‘bad word’. “I didn’t mean _that._ But that’s its name, what else can I call it?”

Rosalie did nothing but laugh, almost doubled over just watching his ‘embarrassment’, as if she’d lured him into it.

The homunculus rolled his eyes. He was dealing with a _child_ , after all.

“Hmph, fine. I meant _Cyanistes caeruleus_.” Pride stuck out his tongue, and smiled very smugly while she righted herself and whined something about not knowing Xerxian or the ‘fancy’ names of animals. “Yep, we’ll see lots of _Cyanistes caeruleus,_ maybe some _Erithacus rubecula_ , and _Troglodytes troglodytes._ ”

“Now you’re just being silly. There’s no such thing as a _double troglodyte_.”

“There _is_ , but it’s just a wren.”

The lesson in Xerxian over, the pair continued wandering along the paths winding across the park. They ducked under the early skirmishes of a snowball fight, hoping to avoid the crossfire for the moment. A portly man stood beside his cart, advertising hot chocolate to an inordinate queue of chattering children, always piping hot as he boiled the water using alchemy. Pride made a note of the vendor for later, and watched the bodyguards shift locations out the corner of his eye. He wondered if Rosalie was so oblivious that she believed Mother would let them wander off alone.

At last, they spotted an older woman and her stall, selling bags of birdseed for a hundred cenz a bag.

“Do you wanna share a bag, or should we get one each?” Pride dug into his pocket without the peacock feather in it and slipped out a hundred cenz coin.

“A bag each! But don’t worry, I’ve got some spare change in my pocket, erm...” Rosalie rummaged around in her own pocket, the metal clanging until she dragged out a handful of coins. She counted out a hundred cenz, and tipped the excess back in. “Here we go.”

They bought the two bags, thanked the lady and set off to find a suitable place to feed the birds.

Pride watched Rosalie choose her spot, planting herself like a tree. She held out a pile of feed in her hand and waited. Slowly, he took several strides backwards, the snow crunching beneath his shoes. Another step. Another. Hopefully this would be further enough away for the simple creatures to not perceive him.

Before too long, a great tit swooped in and settled on the brunette’s hand. Thankfully Rosalie did not ask its name, lest she suffer another laughing fit.

With his perfect eyes he watched the plump yellow bird peck at the seeds, and after a moment it dared to sit in her palm fully. The child beamed, glowing almost, though that could have just been the winter sunlight reflecting off the snow. Pride kept his distance. Rosalie was probably so enthralled she’d never notice.

“Ahh, Selim, look, it’s--huh? What’re you doing aaall the way over there?” She _did_. “Come over here and see the pretty bird!” It flew away for a second, before returning to perch on her fingers. “What’s wrong, you aint afraid of a _bird_ , are you?”

As she padded closer, the bird’s head shot towards him and within the space of half a second it had flitted away with an ugly screech.

“What’d I do?” Rosalie watched it disappear with a tiny frown. “Oh well, we’ll find another.” She tried to brush it aside.

They tiptoed up to a group of chaffinches preening themselves in the alchemically heated birdbath. Rosalie held out her cupped hands, bright, cheery, exuding nothing but kindness as the wind ruffled her hair, but they only shrieked, beating their delicate wings.

The ducks at the lakeside scrambled further into the water, much to the confusion of the humans already feeding them. A large goose chased them from the lake, Rosalie too distracted to realise that it only snapped at him.

Even a kit of fat woodpigeons lumbered out of their way, albeit with a delay, into the huddled safety of some more humans sitting on a bench. The fact that they fled to any human except them frustrated the desperate girl even more.

“Hey, my birdseed’s good, too, you know!” Rosalie fretted in her bewilderment. “I don’t understand...” She squinted suspiciously at the birdseed, tipping some into her hand and watching it spill through the gaps. “It was fine before.”

“It’s no good, Rosalie. Maybe we’ll have better luck if we split up.” Pride suggested. Then she could feed the birds as her whims commanded, and he could dart out of his bodyguards’ purview, empty the seeds in the lake or over the grass and pretend he’d had a _wonderful_ time.

But she was stubborn.

“No, there has to be a way.” She huffed, cheeks pink not just from the cold. “I guess we’ll hafta _act_ like birds, instead.”

The girl resolutely stomped off in the snow, and Pride trailed behind her, sighing at her futile determination. Though, such was an affliction for many humans in their struggles, so why would Rosalie be any different?

“Help me up, please.” She motioned towards the large, naked oak tree before them. Its strong branches drew long shadows over them.

Nodding, Pride let her stand on his hands and pushed her up as far as he could. Her dress protested at the strain, but at last she found a foothold and scrambled up onto a low branch, about ten feet from the ground. Pride, with far less restrictions in his clothing, followed her up into the tree a moment later. He slid along the branch on his belly, before sitting up and letting his legs hang comfortably over the front. Mother must excuse this playful indulgence, but he hoped the bark would not scratch his short trousers too much.

“See? Now they don’t know we’re here.”

Even so, he didn’t understand the purpose of this. ‘Acting like birds’ would do nothing to endear the birds to them, even here, hiding in a tree. The girl dug deep into her bag, and scattered the birdseed into blanketed grass.

“Now, we wait.” She murmured, squinting.

Sure enough, a daring songbird inched closer, and then another, and another. From here, it seemed, the creatures did not sense him, and cared not where the waves of seeds rained down on them from. Pride pointed them out to her as they hopped close, robins, wrens, bullfinches, and indeed, blue and great and long-tailed tits. She giggled again at that, but quiet so as to not scare the birds. Silly girl, she still thought _she_ was the problem.

Soft whistles reached them, pure chirps ending in warbling trills, a gentle and muted song, like the bird sang only to itself while they eavesdropped. Pride had never heard birdsong so close before, and swivelled his head around to try and find the bird. He stopped himself, if he moved too much it might fly away, wherever it was, and somehow he didn’t wish to disturb its song.

“What bird is that?” Rosalie said, absently tossing down another handful.

“I dunno. I’m no good at birds’ songs…” He admitted. Something his pictures could not teach him.

“Something _you_ don’t know? Ha…” She smirked. “I think it’s a blackbird. I hear it a lot when I’m at home, but a lot louder. I think it’s practicing.”

A pied wagtail alighted in the middle of the ever growing flock, weaving between the other songbirds and plucking up the seeds as it skittered along, tail bobbing. The minutes slipped by, the blackbird continued its muted melody, the pair watched from the barren tree branch, until the girl spoke up.

“Hey, Selim?”

“Yes?”

“There’s something you should know.” She turned to him, suddenly very sombre with whatever shocking revelation she was about to disclose. “Jude, he… might not be able to help you with alchemy, even when he’s better. He’s blind…so he can’t draw circles anymore.”

_Anymore?_

Pride jolted straighter, his swaying legs freezing.

So Jude had not always been blind.

Did that mean the Truth had taken his sight due to his Human Transmutation? Pride considered this, his shadows shuddering under his skin at the prospect, but he kept his container impassive. He must not look _pleased_ about her servant’s impairment. The blackbird continued its soft, solitary song, filling the silence.

“N-No, Rosalie, that’s all right. I’d just like to talk to him. I don’t need a demonstration or anything.” Pride assured her. At least his blindness would make him somewhat easier to procure as well, if he was unaware of his circle-less alchemy. “Please don’t worry about that, though, just focus on getting him better.” No need to think of the repercussions of detaining him just yet.

“Thank you.” The girl managed a quiet smile, like some weight had lifted, and she sighed into the fur of her coat, much resembling a nesting bird herself. For all her childishness earlier, she spoke so calmly now, serious. “I’m sure he’ll get better soon.” Something more mature shimmered in her verdant eyes, some part of her she’d kept from him, or kept from everyone.

They returned to watching over the tiny creatures, observing the excited feeding, their chirps, their meaningless squabbles amongst each other. Pride absorbed it all, curious of them, finally sating that curiosity. To think, even at his age, to be experiencing something entirely new, at this moment. The homunculus leant closer, elbows on his knees, grateful to have witnessed the birds close enough, unafraid, just this once, for the first and last time.

“There he is!” Rosalie shook his arm, easing him from his musings.

With her spare hand the child pointed out over the ensemble, at the blob of deep blue on the snow. The estimable peacock strode close, as if wishing to partake in the free food. Its short, modest train brushed the snowy grass at its very tips. Its upcoming preparations for the mating season in the summer, one the bird would never see.

“Mister Peacock, over here!” She waved, stretched forward and threw some birdseed further, further--                       

Rosalie slipped off the bough.

Her hand slid down his sleeve, into his own, and Pride grasped it tight, lurching forward at the added weight. Rosalie dangled over the edge helplessly.

He didn’t understand. Why had he reached for her? Rosalie could do no serious damage to herself falling from this height, though humans were but fragile things. Just his perfect reflexes, nothing more.

“Don’t let go!” She cried fearfully, more from shock than the actual danger. Pride had often seen and delighted in the terrified eyes of humans, and the emotion flickered in Rosalie’s now, but no fear of him within them.

“I won’t, Rosalie!” He promised. What else could he say? Something hopeful flashed across her face. He stretched to grab her other hand, and failing that tightening them both around her one, lest her glove come off.

The girl’s spare hand flailed, grasping, reaching up, it latched around the bobble on his coat, tugging him lower. Pride yelped at the sudden force of it, trying to keep his balance on the branch. He felt his legs kicking out, desperate to find something besides the open air.

No use, she dragged him down with her, and they tumbled down into a heap. Their assembled flock scattered at their cries and the icy flurry that followed.

“Oof…” Pride found himself sprawled on the ground for the second time in as many days, breathless and unsettled again. At least this time Wrath could not taunt him, and he pushed off his stomach. He ran his fingers through the tassels on his coat, checking to see if she’d snapped his bobble off. Both still in one piece, thankfully. More ice crystals caught in their fibres as they swept over the grass.

The intrepid blackbird finally emerged from its hiding place, taking advantage of the lack of competition for seeds. From afar, the peacock watched them, head held high, but apprehensive. It flicked its tail once, before strutting off as their bodyguards revealed themselves, calling after them.

He glanced over at Rosalie, lying flat, a little dazed. It reminded him of their games the day before, her buried in the snow. The young girl blinked and trembled in the cold surrounding her.

“W-We messed up acting like b-birds, then…we can’t even _sort of_ fly!” She laughed, put on and too loud, masking a jittery nervousness. He saw her wince as she pushed onto her knees. No bruises for him, though, no scuffs or marks. At least he could blame it on the snow breaking their fall.

Rosalie batted the powder off her coat and out her white-specked hair, but still she shivered terribly, arms wrapped tight around her. Pride crawled closer, slipped off his bobble hat, and tugged it down over her head, covering her eyes. She froze for a moment, gaping, and he watched her fumble with tugging it back up and adjusting her fringe.

“There you go. Don’t get stuck in the snow again, no Monster to come rescue us here!” The boy stood, and held out his hand for her, helping her to her feet.

“Thanks.”

He could not tell if she thanked him for helping her up or lending her his hat. Perhaps both.

At last the guards reached them.

“M-Master Selim, Lady Rosalie, are you injured? Please stay here, the Madame will be here soon.” Pride ignored their sycophantic attentions, stating that he was fine. Mother would find out, as she always did, and he would tolerate that necessary coddling, instead.

“You poor dears, are you ok?” Ah, here she came.

They both nodded glumly, looking very pathetic indeed, dripping and sniffling. Mother sank down into the snow, hugging them both to her chest, squeezing tight. She released them much too soon, her loving warmth receding before he could absorb it fully.

“Come, I’ve got just the thing. Come now.” She unbuttoned and draped her coat over their shoulders, burying them under it.

One of the bodyguards held the picnic basket, and another several cups that Pride recognised from the hot chocolate vendor. He beamed to himself. Mother always knew what he wanted, as befitted her role.

Mother carefully handed them a cup of hot chocolate each, and nursed at her own cup, leading them back through the park.

Not caring about the steam, Pride took a long gulp, letting its scorching heat bleed down and settle in the hollow of his ‘stomach’. It lingered pleasantly on the surface of his shadowed body. Rosalie gave him a strange look, and he sheepishly looked away.

Keeping the coat close around them, they pottered back to the car, finishing the hot chocolate before they were allowed inside. Pride clambered into the car, leaving Rosalie with the coat to herself.

He settled on his side of the car, Mother having chosen to take the front seat on this occasion. Despite the embarrassment of falling out of a tree of all things, Pride thought it a worthwhile diversion for the day, especially to appease Rosalie. He caught Rosalie’s frown from her place bundled up in Mother’s coat.

“What’s wrong?” Pride asked, forming a frown of his own. He hoped she wasn’t hiding anything more serious from her fall. It would not bode well to send her home injured, and do nothing to encourage Madame Hamburgang to let her visit again, either.

Rosalie opened the coat, shuffled closer and laid it over him, too.

“Thank you.” He said automatically, but his eyes betrayed a deeper confusion. What had she to achieve from continuing to share the coat with him? It wasn’t like it would do him any good, really.

She coughed a little, her cheeks still red, but she smiled dopily.

“You’re welcome.” The girl whispered, and the breath froze in his face, making him cough too. She sighed, closed her eyes and said nothing else.

The car puttered along, slower than normal, forming a gentle motion.

Gazing up over her head, out the window, he saw the snow trickle down again, drowning the earth and the passing buildings in the cold. Pride remembered his wish to nestle at Mother’s side. No such luck now, not until he got home. Yes, then, definitely.

Pride let that comforting thought wrap around him, while his true body sucked at the hot chocolate in his stomach leisurely through its teeth. He felt a quiet tinge of it on his tongue a second time and the container warmed from it, shivering again. No, the warmth did not permeate outwards, but inwards, not his own at all. Then where…?

Rosalie shifted the coat higher over her shoulders. So close, her human warmth slowly seeped into him, as Mother’s did.

They huddled close together, Pride shamefully accepting her warmth and her kindness.

This was not Mother.

But for now, this was enough.

* * *

 Rosalie counted out her stitches, remembering Mrs. Bradley’s instructions, and continued her scarf-to-be. She knew it was her last evening with the Bradleys, and couldn’t imagine doing anything else, enjoying their pleasant company and the crackling fire. Even the silence felt pleasant.

Selim nestled on Mrs. Bradley’s lap, watching his mother’s knitting, following along until his eyelids began to sag, and he nodded off.

“Look at him, all tuckered out.” Beside her, the führer chuckled,

“Yes, he’s had quite a day.” The old woman said, and stroked at his hair, smiling. Selim looked so peaceful there, all snug and warm. Rosalie realised she hadn’t really seen Selim close to his mother alone while she’d been there. She hoped she hadn’t been keeping them apart, and smiled softly herself at seeing him this way.

Rosalie focused back on her needles. She glanced at her three spare balls of wool, a gift from Mrs. Bradley to ensure she could complete it back home. At this rate it’d take her forever to finish it, maybe winter would be over by then! The girl only grew more determined, and carried on at a slightly quicker pace despite her own drowsiness beginning to pull at her.

Mrs. Bradley set her knitting aside, bundled the boy up in her arms, and headed towards the door. Rosalie saw him wriggle out of his mother’s grasp with a tired whine, and he wobbled the rest of the way.

Alone now with just the führer, the girl squirmed a little, not knowing really what to say, if she should say anything at all.

“So,” He began, “I hear you dragged Selim out of a tree.”

Now she _had_ to say something.

“I did, Your Excellency. He was trying to help me, but he overbalanced, I think.”

The man made a noise to acknowledge her answer, but not much else, returning to the newspaper.

His moustache twitched. It reminded Rosalie of her own ‘father’, he’d had black hair, too. She hadn’t really gotten to know him before he’d died, but Rosalie did miss him. He had been very kind to her, even if he’d adopted her only to pretend to be his real daughter. Selim was adopted too, wasn’t he? Rosalie wondered if he remembered his real parents, and she thought of her even blurrier memories of her own. No, she mustn’t drag him into _that_.

Rosalie put her needles down, turning to the man fully. If nothing else, she’d better thank him for yesterday, before she left.

“Um, Your Excellency? I didn’t say so yesterday, but thank you for mentioning me on the radio. I really don’t deserve that kinda attention, but I really appreciate it!” She hoped her mother had heard it. Was she missing her, after her week away?

“Oh, it was nothing, Rosalie. You are our guest, after all.” He looked sternly up over the paper. “Though, you were quite brave yesterday, standing up to me. I wonder why.”

“Well, Selim told me that last year you played a trick on him. You changed all the clocks! So I thought you couldn’t be all scary.” She babbled, his stare making her incapable of anything but blurting out the truth. But the man’s posture changed and something different glittered in his uncovered eye.

“Ooh, and I don’t suppose _you_ have a penchant for pranks, too?”

“I do, Your Excellency,” She admitted. “but I promised my mother I’d be on my best behaviour while I was here, so no pranks.”

“Come now. I’m sure _one_ little prank would not cause too much trouble. And I’m sure Selim will see the funny side, too.” His uncovered eye closed for a second. Must have been a wink.

Rosalie remembered her plans for revenge. Though the boy had nearly saved her from falling out of the tree, and lent her his hat, and the rest of the things that day, that did _not_ excuse him waking her so rudely.

Mother would understand. How could she deny an offer like that, from the führer himself?

“Ok then, just because it’s my last day.” She let herself smirk.

While Mrs. Bradley tucked unsuspecting Selim into bed and the fire crackled lazily, Rosalie and the führer sat together and schemed up a suitable revenge.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pride finally gets to spend some time with Mrs. Bradley like he wanted, but what will Rosalie's revenge prank be? We shall see in the….final chapter! Rosalie's going home 'tomorrow', after all. I can't believe the fic's nearly over already!
> 
> By the way, in the winter blackbirds sing what’s called a sub-song, described as singing quietly to themselves. Here’s a video of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSFBt57VulI
> 
> I did a doodle of Rosalie’s coat, originally it was gonna be red. http://shocotate.tumblr.com/post/166334700687 Hopefully soon I’ll have Pride’s drawn too. It’s just like a regular dark blue winter coat with white trims and two white bobbles, and his hat would be one like in the bottom left picture, but the bobbles white.
> 
> See you guys in hopefully less time, and as always, comments and kudos make me super happy :)


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am sorry this took so long, I wrote another fic for Halloween and then I realised I’d got so much of this chapter left to do!
> 
> And today, Rosalie goes home, what can we get done before then, though?

The slow waves of his body lapped at the walls, basking again in the comforting lamplight. Feeling rather refreshed following his nap on the couch, Pride sat up in bed with his bird scrapbook, an interesting diversion before he went to sleep, he thought. His faintly clattering teeth sipped at the remaining drops of cooled but still enjoyable chocolate within his container. 

Pride took the peacock feather from his bedside table and secured it beside an image of an elaborate Xingese woodblock print of the bird. Content that the feather would not fall out, he shut the scrapbook and leant it down heavy-side up to keep the feather flattened, and returned to the other book at his side, the _Amestrian Avian Anthology_. With nothing better to do he might as well brush up on the scientific names of rarer birds should he need to dazzle Rosalie with more Xerxian. 

Flicking onto the page of _T. Merula_ , the humble blackbird, he scanned over the artwork, the delicate strokes of its inky plumage. Often overlooked, perhaps the day’s events would give Selim a new interest in the creature. Yes, he could compose a cheery letter to the publishing company requesting a copy of the illustration for his scrapbook. Mother would surely praise him for his initiative. Pride nodded to himself, calculating where to place it on the page. Perhaps it could have a page of its own, and he’d pepper the edges with innocent scribbles of his feeding the birds and hearing its subdued song. 

_Tap, tap._

A barely audible tapping disturbed his reading, coming from outside the bedroom door. And again, slightly louder. 

“Hm?” 

“Psst, Selim.” Said an equally audible voice. 

With hardly a thought the shadows receded into him without a sound, as if they had never been there at all. Pride set the volume atop his scrapbook on his nightstand (he pushed his warm glass of milk further on lest it spill) and slid out of the covers. He pottered up to the door, slowly opening it, hoping it wouldn’t creak. 

Rosalie rubbed at her eye with a yawn, a book and her teddy bear tucked under her arm. 

“Rosalie, it’s way past bedtime.” 

She narrowed her uncovered eye. 

“You’re up, too. Your light’s on…” 

“I was just putting the feather from today in my scrapbook. You need to sleep.” Pride told her, and felt like Mother would soon be lightly scolding _him_ over staying up if she found them. 

“I don’t need sleep. I can sleep for ages on the train tomorrow. Besides, your mother said I should let ya read this.” She handed him the book, something resembling a fox wearing a coat on the cover. “There’s no other time, so we gotta do it now. It won’t take long, promise!” 

Pride acquiesced to her whims, opening the door wider to let her in, since she had brought it from home seemingly for that one purpose. He crawled back into bed, regarding the book more closely. 

_The Tale of Mr. Tod  
_

That must have been the fox’s name, he supposed. As it had in the previous days, the mattress sank marginally at the girl’s added weight, but the bed was much too big for it to matter. They huddled on the adjacent side to where Pride usually slept, and he relished greatly in the cool surface of the seldom used pillows. He decided he should swap them around more often. 

Rosalie had scooped up the rabbit teddy from his toy chest, and she let it rest between them. 

“You sit next to us, Peter. You’re in this story, too.” Rosalie patted its head, before she opened the book onto their laps. From what Pride gathered, the original was the tale of the foolish child of a bunny and some misadventure regarding a farm, but now in this one he had grown into a more sedate, sensible adult, though still in his little blue jacket and slippers. 

“This book’s pretty special; my father bought it for me when I was--I mean, for my birthday.” 

Rosalie began to read it out loud, and took several moments after finishing each page to gaze attentively at the illustrations, most bold, black inked images, interspersed with others of soft watercolour. 

It seemed the good-natured rabbit beside them was _not_ the focus of this particular tale however, rather two unpleasant creatures, a fox and a badger. Apparently even the authoress had tired of such light-heartedness. 

The disagreeable badger gallivanted as he wished, always invading Mr. Tod’s unoccupied homes as a place to stay, and eating whatever he could find. In his greed the badger kidnapped seven rabbit kits to cook for breakfast, Peter’s nieces and nephews. 

“The poor things…!” Rosalie covered the velvet rabbit’s ears, and then its eyes _with_ its ears, making it shiver.

Their father had come to rescue them with his cousin, and planned to dig a tunnel beneath Mr. Tod’s house, into the kitchen. They dug very doggedly for rabbits, into the night and the next morning without rest. Pride grinned somewhat wryly to himself, before burying the silly expression.

No sooner had the rabbits burrowed out of sight when who should return home but Mr. Tod, not best pleased to discover the badger snoozing in his bed, and wearing his boots to bed, also! He swiftly schemed up a solution to his badger-shaped problem.

“ _Mr. Tod put down the pail beside the bed, took up the end of rope with the hook_

 _—hesitated, and looked at Tommy Brock. The snores were almost apop--_ apople…” Rosalie stumbled over the word. 

“Apoplectic.” Pride said, thinking it a rather complex word for such a book intended for children. “It means really angry.” 

“Selim, can you carry on? In case there’s any more big words like that.” Rosalie trailed off into another yawn. She must have grown bored with reading aloud. 

Pride nodded, and took a sip of milk before reading. 

Rather than confront the intruder directly, the fox deigned to elaborately prank him instead, placing a water pail over his bed to drop on him, ruining his bed sheets in the process. The girl praised the fox’s cleverness, giggling quietly, while Pride considered it a most cowardly method of dispatching him. Then again if the vulpine was so weak as to be unable to raise a bucket of water very high, perhaps the sly approach was better suited. 

The badger, more wily than even a fox it seemed, woke before the prank could be executed, and in the violence and commotion that followed when they at last met the elder bunnies seized the opportunity and rescued the babies from the oven. 

“The end. The bunnies got away after all, but who do you think won between Mr. Fox and Mr. Badger? …Rosalie?” Pride turned to her, only to find the brunette slumped down and sleeping very soundly indeed, no apoplectic snoring at all, both teddies bundled in her arms. He shook his head, smiling faintly. 

_Foolish child. This was_ your _idea…  
_

Pride laid the book next to her, shuffling over to his side of the bed. A faint tug on the lamp bathed the room in darkness, before he snuggled under the quilt. Far easier if he just left her there. Besides, if he woke her the girl might find something else to try and avoid sleeping. Yes, getting out of bed and carrying her and her teddy and book back to her room was far too much effort to expend on the girl. 

Not that she’d looked much too peaceful to disturb… 

The homunculus slept peacefully, dreamlessly until he felt Rosalie slip out of bed, giggling to herself again over something. Maybe she was going to the bathroom, or if it was morning, going to get dressed. Pride didn’t care either way, and took advantage of the renewed cover space. Without opening his eyes, he wrapped up in them and drifted back to sleep. 

_Selim…_

More irksome sounds to wake him. 

_Selim…_

“Selim come quick! Mr. Ed and Al are here!” 

At the mention of the Elrics apparently safe and well and _visiting_ Pride shook himself awake, mostly. He all but leapt out of bed-- 

Only to catch in something light and wiry, like a web. 

“Wh—what?” Wahh--” The strings parted, and his top half toppled through the gap, his arms and his head each caught between dozens of different, overlapping strands, all blue. Blue? Was this Rosalie’s wool? Why had she…? 

As a flash of white Rosalie peeped out of the doorframe, chortling, and Wrath and Mother likewise appeared behind her, even Mother disguising a laugh behind her hand. She had gone through the excess of calling over his ‘parents’ before executing her childish scheme? No, judging by that boisterous glint in Wrath’s eye, his little brother had put the girl up to this, passing it off as his eccentricity. Perhaps Mr. Tod’s elaborate prank in Rosalie’s book should have come as a warning. 

Merely within his act of course, Pride flushed terribly, squirming at effectively everyone in the household gawking and laughing at him in such a position. Yet he did not squirm too hard, for fear he overbalance and fall flat on his belly for a _third_ time in three days! 

Had he been alone he would have been tempted to slice through the threads, yet somehow he didn’t want to damage the wool Mother had given Rosalie, no matter how the girl had misused its purpose. 

Eventually, he stopped struggling, hanging there, full of a boyish but drowsy stubbornness and a conceit that he could easily escape if it was worth the effort. Mother untangled him from the webbed mess, easing him out. She untied the simple knot around his ankle while holding him up, before her smooth hand rubbed soothingly over his back. 

“Come now, no harm done.” She cooed. “That being said, Rosalie, I expect you to help rewrap all this wool so we can put it back in your suitcase.” 

“Of course!” Rosalie stifled her laughter to nod. 

Mother set Pride down with a ruffle of his hair, and he set to work on removing the wool from his bed posts, wrapping it into a compact ball as he went. A moment later the girl joined him, climbing _through_ the wool to grab another loose end. It seemed she’d been clever enough to wrap each wool ball at a different height so they would not overlap too much. 

“Come along, you two.” Mother said once they’d finished. “There are still a few hours left, so after breakfast we can bake some biscuits, like you asked.” 

Well now, that didn’t sound so bad. 

* * *

“Three eggs each, some butter, some sugar, brown sugar for the cocoa ones.” The girl arranged the ingredients pleasantly on the worktop, dividing the duplicates for the two separate batches. “Cocoa…flour… ” 

“We need to weigh out the ingredients, too.” Pride poked his head up over the cookbook, pretending to read through it. At least the plain biscuit and cocoa biscuit recipes shared a page, so he propped it open against the wooden spoon holder. 

Mother watched them with her faint smile, letting them bake by themselves, except when it came to handling the oven, she said. The kitchen grew warm with their chatter, and the slow progress of the mixing settled into a calm that was not overly tedious. No doubt Rosalie set this leisurely pace, in the same way she had avoided sleep the night before, she wished to prolong what little time remained before she went home. 

“What’s next?” Rather than walking, Rosalie chose to lean backwards while mixing to attempt to read the cookbook. 

“It goes butter, sugar, flour eggs, so flour.” For all her wanting to waste time, she had selected such a pedestrian recipe, quick and simple. The so many hands of his true form could have created a hundred batches in an instant, if he would ever require such a use of them. For now though, he was content in sifting the flour into his bowl using his container’s soft, ordinary hands. Gentle taps. 

_Thmp_. Rosalie gently struck her second egg against the side of the bowl, and again, until it split and with a yelp she scooped the dripping white and yolk up into the bowl with her hands. She plucked out any bits of shell and smeared a watery streak onto her pink apron, the same pink as her bow. 

Having already cracked his eggs perfectly, Pride sprinkled some flour over the baking trays, and wiping the excess onto his apron painted powdery white handprints against the dark blue fabric. 

They spread the dough into small blobs on the tray, about a dozen each, and Mother eased them into the oven. 

“Phew, they turned out ok after all.” Fifteen minutes later, Rosalie inspected the completed biscuits, poking one, seemingly pleased with the texture. Mother warned her that they were still hot, but she poked it anyway, ever so curious. 

“Of course, baking is a science, like alchemy, you just gotta get the measurements right.” Mother often asked him to help her in baking for some of her charity functions, and given Selim’s love of alchemy, a lesser form of chemistry of sorts in baking suited him perfectly. 

“Huh, science? No, baking is an art; you can make wonderful stuff just mixing lots of things together, and then make it look fancy with icing.” 

“But if you just follow the instructions, and do it right, the results’ll be the same every time. You can’t really change the ingredients so much, or you’ll make something else entirely.” 

“But what if I said, I wanna add chocolate. I _could_.” For good measure Rosalie daintily went through the motions, pretending the dip the biscuit into something. “Then it’d be a chocolate biscuit.” 

“That’s kinda separate from the whole _baking_ part though, if it’s already baked.” 

Mother must have overheard their debate of art and science, and began melting some chocolate in a pan should Rosalie’s harebrained idea come to pass. And if not, they could always pour it into a cup, a rudimentary replica of yesterday’s hot chocolate. 

“Even so, I can be all creative now that they’re finished.” The girl pottered off, returning with two small icing bags and holding one out for him. “Look, I’m gonna sign my name on one, so everyone knows we baked ‘em!” 

Pride began the elegant and effortless loops of ‘ _Selim’_ with the pale orange icing ever so carefully, given the small space on the biscuit. He glanced over at Rosalie, who had only just started on the first letter. It resembled an oversized A more than an R. Was she writing something else? It didn’t look like all the letters were going to fit anyway.

The brunette leaned close again to continue, but suddenly gasped and snatched the biscuit up, biting a large chunk from it. All the icing came with it, some stuck to her lip. 

“Did you make a mistake?” He asked her, blinking. Surely she had not just gotten hungry halfway through and found the iced biscuit irresistible. 

The girl fretted, fidgeting and failing to pass it off as anything resembling casual. She _had_. He watched her feeble antics with a grin, adding the neat dot of the ‘I’. 

“No, no, I was er-- just making a... a half moon!” Rosalie held up the remaining piece of biscuit, demonstrating the moon’s phase. Pride had only time to acknowledge the misshapen object with a nod before she popped the rest into her mouth. 

“Now it’s an eclipse!” She exclaimed with a flourish, flexing her open hands. 

“If there’s no moon, that’s a _new moon_.” He corrected her immediately. “An eclipse would look something…hm...” Pushing the signed biscuit aside, Pride plucked a dark and light biscuit from the trays. He nibbled the darker cookie into a slightly smaller circle, and admitted to himself that he would need to eat the both of them after this. 

“Like…this.” He placed the darker one over the centre of the pale biscuit. “This one’s the sun”, he tapped the larger biscuit, “and the other is the moon, which covers it up. There’s one happening in the spring, y’know. It’s gonna be a lot of fun.” 

Rosalie signed a new biscuit, fighting off her sporadic urge to bite it into any more lunar shapes, and soon enough their names spread pleasingly across the trio of biscuits. 

_Selim & Rosalie_

The oven door opened again, heating the room further. It seemed in the midst of their talk Mother had already prepared a batch of her own, placing the settling dough balls onto another tray. 

“I followed the recipe exactly, except I decided to use currants instead of raisins.” As ever, Mother provided the perfect middle ground to their ‘debate’. He caught Rosalie smiling, and smiled back, agreeing to disagree on the matter. “I hope you two like them, and the rest you can take home with you, Rosalie.”

While they waited for the icing to set and the newest batch to bake, the two of them were left with very little to do except watch the oven and lick the remnants of the dough from their wooden spoons. Mother stepped out for a moment to fetch a container for the biscuits once they were done. 

“Did your mother bake?” Rosalie asked once they were alone, almost a whisper over the sounds of the oven. 

“Aren’t we baking right now?” 

The girl shook her head, though hesitated a tad. 

“I don’t mean Mrs. Bradley. No, your-- um, _real_ mother. Sorry, I—I shouldn’t ask that. Never mind.” 

Pride considered this, the concept of Selim’s _old_ parents. Mother had been much too cautious to pry into such while he was embroiled in a hidden sadness after his adoption. The degrading behaviour quickly led to Pride shifting his act into his usual vivacity of a child, and so he had never thought much about them, since such questions went unasked. But now the girl dared to ask, not six days after they had met. 

Automatically, his mind drifted not to his previous, harsh and indifferent human mothers but to the few times Lust had served as his mother. No harm in gracing the girl with an answer, he supposed. 

“Yeah, she baked lots.”

“Was she really good?” 

“She was…no, she was terrible, actually.” Despite himself, he told the truth, recalling Lust’s feigned lack of talent in their acts, those times when they acted in tandem, before their responsibilities to their younger brethren drew them apart. “She kept things in the oven way too long. They were always so burnt, and they tasted awful. But I’d always just put them all in my mouth and say, oh, I love them!” Pride mimed shoving them into his mouth, puffing out his cheeks. 

“Did she know?” She grinned, flashing her teeth. 

“Of course she knew. She was… perfect.” His thoughts bled from the dull practices of their charades to the much more vivid, alluring missions where they could be themselves. When they clawed the Crest of Blood into the earth as one, amid that rapturous bloodshed he truly saw _her_ , his sibling that held Father’s eyes and his darkness, just like him, the only other blessed with such. With her he needn’t act, they were equal in their endless devotion to Father, the true expression of Father’s will, and the only one who stirred their Sin in the other. Together they stood, above all things in this world. Lust had known it, too. 

“She was always there for me…until she wasn’t.” All at once the pretence of his birthmother and the memory of his sister coalesced into pitiable emotion. “I should have been there, I should have...” Pride’s guarded thoughts that he kept buried so deep within him leaked out. He thought of her screams and her seared skin, brought so low by a _human_ , and Wrath there _watching_ her die. _Stop…_

Pride blinked. Something dribbled down his cheek. Why was he… _crying?_ How could he be having so pathetically, over something like…this…! His container’s hands clenched, stabbing angry little crescents into his palm. 

_Don’t think about it! Don’t think about_ her _!_

His dozens of internal eyes screwed shut, and again Pride felt the languid, poisonous drip of a mournful tear bleed down his shadow, drawing a scorched line, like something cutting him open. His numb shade burned, like she had burned. Like she burned down the First Branch. 

Greed’s betrayals might have divided them, while Pride endeavoured to drag him back to Father’s side, but in her death the Seven were shattered forever. 

Pride voiced none of this of course, silent, drowning beneath his sorrow while his small shoulders shook. 

They’d said Selim’s birthparents died by fire, too. 

“Oh Selim…It’s ok to be sad sometimes. I’m sorry for making you cry.” She whispered. He heard her patter closer. 

“I’m not crying.” He covered his eyes with his sleeve, wiping away these fake tears. Even a boy like Selim would not wish to be seen like this, as much as no human would want to witness such a pathetic display in the first place. “See, Rosalie? Told you I was a crocodile…” He explained them away, what she would see as trying to be brave even in the face of such heartbreak, what Mother and everyone else saw as the death of his parents. 

_Drip, drop._ Inside, the tears welled in the void of where she used to be. 

A warm weight on his shoulders ripped him from his misery, so sudden he flinched. The child folded her arms over him gingerly. She smelled of flour and dough. They probably both did. 

“I--I understand.” Her voice was filled with so much of her pity, her wretched human empathy, as if she could understand. Though, Rosalie had lost her own father, hadn’t she? But it was irrelevant, no more than an infinitesimal speck on the centuries he and Lust had shared. “Selim… there’s something I need to tell you…” 

The boy trembled at her gentle heat, his skin so cool compared to her and the soft flowing tears against his cheeks. To lose one’s parent, even the thought…Father… _no_ , that would NEVER happen. He cursed himself for having such a ridiculous thought at all. Pride would sooner join Lust in death before allowing anything to ever befall his Father. 

“I’m a…” 

Rosalie faltered. Through his blurring sight he caught a strange warring on her face, like something trying to burst from her, so much so that a few sparse droplets of her own spilled out. 

“…a crocodile, too.” She sniffed, smiling sheepishly. Whatever secret Rosalie still managed to hold went unsaid, focused on his wellbeing completely. She hugged him a little tighter, pushing onto her tiptoes. 

Pride let her hold him, so shamefully wallowing in his grief. Mother, Wrath, they had never asked him to mourn, and now for the first time in his façade he wept, acknowledging his loss. Timidly, with an almost fearful reluctance he turned to face her, and he returned her embrace. 

For just a moment he did not quash the memories of her, of his little sister, of Lust. In his mind he imagined her smile, her bright eyes and her darkness, perfect as ever. Perfect as Father desired so long ago. Just this once he… _accepted_ his shameful grief, and at last mourned his fallen sibling. 

Resting his head on Rosalie’s shoulder, Pride let his crocodile tears drip down where she could not see, and their blues blended together. 

* * *

The presidential car puttered slowly over the gritted roads. Pride let his legs sway over his seat, while Mother sat where she belonged on her side of the car, no meddlesome Wrath to be found. Hopefully he was getting some work done for once. 

He watched the snowy landscape drift by through the window, easing out a long breath that froze in the frigid air. The girl crawled along and popped her head up beside him, blowing a matching icy stream. Her mouth twitched into a quaint smile, before she shuffled back to her seat. 

Rosalie held her small basket on her lap, checking on some of her chocolate dipped biscuits. Creative baking, indeed. 

A knowing, comfortable silence stretched between them, both content to enjoy the quiet for once, the vague hums of the outside. Pride mused and hugged his jacket around him. He should have brought his coat. 

The week had passed so swiftly, yet it felt like Rosalie had been with them far longer. Not that he would actually _miss_ her company, given her growing boldness to embarrass him, her senseless, childish games. How ridiculous. Then again, all too soon he would again be whisked away into his lessons; such was the nature of his façade. 

And perhaps Rosalie’s, too. Pride dwelled on those glimpses of that solemn, grown-up side of her, buried beneath her boisterous masks, her pranks and her odd, endless secrets. All to cover Jude’s supposed Human Transmutation, he imagined. Under the false similarities of their tragedy tinged childhoods, that something else – the need to pretend – drew them closer. So strange, for him to have something in common with a _human_ … to not be alone in his pretence, as in his mother’s taste of clothes was…comforting. 

Soon enough they stood on the bustling platform, the only blues amongst bland greys of metal and the pure white above. No streaks of wintry sky peeked out from the clouds, and in their vibrant, clashing blues and reds they could be out of place together. 

“Ah, Lady Rosalie. How good to see you again. Have you enjoyed yourself?” Mr. Maisner pottered down the steps, his white moustache bristling jovially as he spoke, attired exactly as before. 

“Yup, me and Selim baked some biscuits today, and yesterday we had a picnic, and saw a peacock!” She handed the man the basket. “And loads of other things!” 

“I’m sure the Madame will love hearing all about it.” 

While Maisner and Mother went through the usual pleasantries and thank yous, Rosalie turned to him. Pride assumed she wanted a nice, adult kind of farewell, as all children desired, and as he stretched out his hand she dragged him into another hug.                                                                                                     

“See you later, Selim.” She chirped, squeezing him tight with that same disarming enthusiasm as when they first met. A much cheerier hug compared to _earlier_. Pride hugged her back as much as he could manage. 

“See you later, Rosalie.” 

Maisner took her hand once they parted, helping her up the steps. At least she could not attempt to leap _up_ the steps this time. He watched her striking blues disappear into the carriage. 

A frozen little sigh. All that remained now was to wait, and invite the silly child back someday. 

Pride’s brow furrowed. He was forgetting something… 

With a blare and huff of smoke, the train began to pull away. 

He tapped at his chin. How could he have overlooked anything, especially this thing that seemed so important? _  
_

_What was it…?_

Wait! He hadn’t reminded her about Jude. A foolish child like her, despite her uneventful life in the countryside, would forget all about it if he wasn’t careful. 

“R-Rosalie!” He cried, dashing across the platform, not caring how he looked, pushing past the cooing females who had recognised him again. “Rosalie!” 

“Hm?” Her small shape poked up from the window, seemingly kneeling on her seat, her fluffy chestnut hair hanging down. 

“Tell Mr. Jude…I hope he gets better soon!” Just a hint of a thought, wrapped in the pure chimes of his veneer; an innocent concern for his friend’s dear servant and nothing more. 

Rosalie nodded, that mature haze shimmering in her eyes again. She smiled, and waved softly to him, and he waved back, beaming his bright childish grin, until he couldn’t see her anymore. 

The boy thought he heard the hushed song of the blackbird again, and despite the icy chill of the snow cloaked city, the cold hollow of his insides felt warm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And suddenly Lust and feels. Was this whole fic just a means of Pride coming to terms with Lust’s death? Yes, yes it was.
> 
> The Tale of Mr. Tod's a pretty big book for Beatrix Potter, bigger than this chapter, even!
> 
> By the way the biscuit moon thing is totally a reference to an advert for Jaffa Cakes I saw when I was a kid. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dtmRmOHK78
> 
> Also, a huge thanks for Sophira-Lou for drawing the cover art and the picture for this chapter. Please check her out!
> 
> Don’t go away just yet, as there’s an epilogue coming soon :) And as ever, comments and kudos are much appreciated :3


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here is the epilogue. Thank you everyone who made it this far. This is the longest fics I’ve written for ages, so I’m glad people have been enjoying it :) I know Rosalie’s an obscure character so any attention at all was really awesome.

Shimmering petals twinkled ever so bright in the indoor garden, a crowd of teddy bears and so many kinds of plush animals clustered around like a picnic, or more appropriately, a tea party. Of the _non_ -alchemic variety this time.

The two Rosalies sat in the centre; the fake girl on the floor took a tiny imagined sip of the porcelain before returning to the book on her lap.

“ _Old Mr. Bouncer was forgiven, and they all had dinner. Then Peter and Benjamin told their story—but they had not waited long enough to be able to tell the end of the battle between Tommy Brock and Mr. Tod._ ” The book closed with a quiet thump. “There we go, the bunnies got away safely. Isn’t that nice, Rosalie?”

Silence. The Rosalie in the elaborate chair didn’t react in the slightest, head drooped down, the miniature teacup on the arm untouched. She hadn’t expected her to, really, but she continued making the effort. Even with all her teddies and books for company, the real Rosalie probably got lonesome too, especially with Mother so busy, and her being away.

“Selim, that boy I told you about, read this when I was with him the other day, but I ended up falling asleep. I thought you’d enjoy it.” Rosalie… _Amy_ recalled the gift of the book from her ‘father’, one of his last gifts before he’d died. It only made sense that his true daughter should get to read it as well. “He has a bunny teddy just like you do, but his is called Peter, see?” She lifted the book higher, holding the picture of Peter and Benjamin out for her. “Bearnard and Peter got into a little fight, but they were both ok. They were just playing.”

Rosalie didn’t move or twitch, but Amy didn’t mind it, not a bit of fear in her, all too used to such strange things, moving suits of armour, tiny alchemists and blow footballs that threw themselves. A moment passed, Amy gulped the rest of the imaginary tea, collecting the cups and teapot into their box and tucking the book under her arm.

“Well, see you later, Rosalie. Bearnard can keep you company,” Amy said, standing and dusting off her dress. “just don’t let him near any Transmutation Circles…” She called as she slipped out the door.

While she pottered along the much less confusing corridors of her home, she settled back into being Rosalie again, without the actual Rosalie in view. With Selim, despite the worry over Jude and protecting her secret, sometimes she’d managed to forget about her acting, her tricking him, ‘til it almost felt real.

Rosalie closed the door to the living room behind her, keeping the heat from the fireplace in.

“Now, where’d I leave them…?”

The girl swivelled her head around, her hair swishing, until she spotted a bundle of blue and white resting against the pillow. Aha, here they were. Rosalie scooped up her needles and curled up on the couch, taking advantage of the natural light that streamed in through the windows. Somewhere between napping on the train and arriving home the day before, she spent a couple of hours of knitting, determined to get the scarf finished. Rosalie hummed softly to herself, filling the warmer silence of the room, and soon enough the scarf’s edge flowed down and settled over her as a strip of pale blue.

Without a sound, the door eased open, and Rosalie half expected it to be Selim. How silly. But if anyone could just as suddenly appear, it would probably be him. He _did_ know that disappearing magic, after all, though that could have only worked on teddy bears.

Mother stepped in with polite taps and sad eyes, back from dealing with Jude no doubt. She looked like she was about to speak, until the phone rang, and she turned her attention to it instead. Rosalie stopped knitting, sitting up straighter while her mother spoke. Secretive as they were, phone calls and even letters were a rarity. It reminded her of when Mother had first arranged her visit to Central, those quiet, serious talks adults had between themselves.

“Rosalie dear, Madame Bradley is on the telephone. She wants to speak with you.”

The girl shuffled off the couch.

“Hello?” What could she have to phone her about? She didn’t think she’d left anything at their house by mistake.

“Good afternoon, Rosalie. I hope you had a pleasant journey home.”

“Mm-hm, my scarf’s nearly done as well. Thank you for teaching me.”

“I’m sure it’s going to turn out just lovely, and it’s all practise, isn’t it?” The woman’s gentle laugh echoed out the speaker. “Oh, but I don’t want to keep you. I wanted to thank you, for what you did for Selim yesterday.”

“Huh? …Oh!” Selim’s mother had seen _that?_ Her comforting the poor boy after her curiosity had upset him?

“Selim’s a brave boy, he’s been through so much, but he tries to be too brave sometimes, keeping his feelings inside because he doesn’t want anyone to worry. He must trust you very much to speak to you about something like that, given your similar circumstances.” More similar than Mrs. Bradley knew, but Selim _almost_ knew. She’d almost _told_ him. “In a way I’m glad he finally found someone to confide in, so thank you for being there for him when he needed it. I know he appreciated it, too.”

Rosalie blushed at the undeserved praise.

“I-I um, I couldn’t let him suffer so much by himself. It’s all anyone would have done.”

She thought of Selim’s soft trembles as she’d held him, his stifled little sobs like he was ashamed to have them heard at all, until his tears ran out. No need to intrude on his grief by admitting the terrible thing they shared, their tragic similarities.

“Such a mature girl you are, Rosalie. You are welcome to come and visit us again any time you like.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Bradley, for everything. Bye-bye.” Rosalie set the receiver down gingerly with two hands, fumbling with it a little, still unused to the thing even after so long.

“Madame Bradley told me what you did.” Mother patted at the spot next to her on the couch, waving her closer. Even now, after her week away Rosalie had not seen much of her upon her return, and tentatively sat down beside her.

Her shawl folded around her, easing her into her arms, so unexpected but tender, maybe like hers had been with Selim.

“I’m very proud of you, Rosalie.” Mother pressed a gentle kiss onto her head, stroking her hair. “I’ve missed you. When Jude has finished resting he will be happy to see you home, as well.”

_Home?_ Yes, she was home now, wasn’t she? Her home far longer than the any gloomy orphanage, with Mother and Jude and Mister Maisner who cared for her so much…

“I missed you too, Mother.” She whispered, nuzzling closer, accepting the affection. Selim’s step-mother loved him just like her own child, why should her own be any different?

Something warm pooled in her chest, while Rosalie watched the floating flurries of snow pour outside the window. She thought better of wishing for anything warmer outside though, or else her and Selim’s wishes might mix again and bring the rain. Not to mention, she’d have no use for her scarf!

“Do you think Jude will get better soon?”

“In time. I think we’re passed the worst of it, dear.” Mother cooed, still weaving her fingers along her identical auburn strands. “Now, why don’t you tell me about your trip to Central?”

Nodding and smiling, Rosalie sat up and spoke all about peacocks and avalanches and how she had wound up with the führer’s son as a friend.

* * *

 

The days slipped by, blending into one another in their similarities, fourteen of them. Pride enjoyed the indulgence of it, even without Rosalie to fritter away the hours on. The childish games they played felt forced now, in a way he could not place, when he was alone. Well, it was only _normal_ for a boy like Selim to miss his new friend a tad, and settle in the unstructured, relaxed time away from his lessons, not playing but nestling close to his mother.

Even so, he could not waste all his time doing _nothing_ , and today he sat in Wrath’s office, merely a boy making the most of his last day of freedom until those endless, monotonous lessons resumed. Not _boredom_. Besides, how could spending the day with his beloved father be anything _but_ exciting?

Wrath scribbled his way through the day’s paperwork, the deliberate scratching of the pen the only sounds filling the quiet office, while Pride took a leisurely gulp of wine, eyes lightly closed. Humans said wine brought a kind of warmness with it, but Pride had never felt such warmth in any great capacity. Naturally, alcohol could not affect homunculi unless in copious amounts, flawless as their regeneration was. It still tasted rather good, though. At a glance it could be mistaken for fruit juice, not that anyone would likely be visiting them.

Mustang’s dog had stood there with her ever-present and obvious anxiety as she poured Wrath some tea, before Mother had surprised them all by telephoning Wrath and calling her away. Wrath said Hawkeye could leave once she had completed her errand for Mother, providing ample time for Pride to slip away and visit Father.

He mused on the much more convenient times when Envy could take his place for a few hours, and he could revel in the glory of Father’s presence for a more extended period. No matter, once Envy returned, dragging Dr. Marcoh with him, all time after the Promised Day would become irrelevant, and he would spend the rest of eternity with Father, and Lust, and his other siblings. _So, so close…not even two months away…_ Those thoughts poured through him, overturning all doubts and potential obstacles, bringing a delicious aftertaste to the wine.

The door slid open without a sound, Hawkeye once again making herself known, a strange parcel in her arms. How odd. Pride glanced towards her with his bright doe eyes, ever so curious.

“Madame Bradley requested I bring this package right away, Your Excellency.” Her brown eyes shifted lower. “It is addressed to you, Selim.”

“Thank you, Miss Hawkeye.” He accepted the gift readily with a delightful chirrup, grinning as she pulled her arms away a fraction too quick.

Without really watching her leave, Pride carefully untied the string wrapped around it, peeking inside. A bright expanse of blue filled the entire parcel, and the lightest touch sent it rolling down his lap, the couch and unravelling onto the polished floor. From its centre slipped an envelope. Pride caught it under his small shoe, lest it slide away.

“Hm?” He bunched the thing up into his lap again, and inspected one blue tasselled edge. They brushed his nose and he huffed a little.

_Rosalie’s scarf?_

Why had she sent him this? Was this a belated attempt to dress their long destroyed snowman? Pride ran his fingers idly along it. She had followed Mother’s instructions rather well, and Mother’s wool was always of the utmost quality. The soft knitted fibres felt pleasant against his cheek, much better than when he had been stuck in it the day she’d left, and before he realised it the scarf was snugly wrapped against his neck.

Somehow Pride didn’t want to take it off just yet, and he turned his attention to the letter underfoot, carefully dislodging it. Its front said _Selim_ in neat enough calligraphy, and a bright wax seal displayed an elaborate ‘H’. A rather blurry, smudged H. Perhaps an error in applying the seal? _Silly girl._ He slid his fingernail under the corner of the wax, flicking the letter open.

_Hi Selim,_

_How are you? I’m sure you’ve been up to lots of fun things since I went home. Did you get to finish your story? As you can probably tell already, I finally finished the scarf, please take care of it! I thought you should have it, since you got all caught up in the wool that it’s made from. Is that Equivalent Exchange, then? I guess it doesn’t matter, you can have it anyway._

_Jude’s getting better slowly, we’re all taking good care of him, but Mother doesn’t want him travelling anywhere while he’s still poorly. Sorry, but it’ll be a while ‘til he can visit you. Maybe in a few months you can come and stay with us instead. I mentioned that Alkahestry stuff to him. I wonder if those Xingese alchemists would be able to help?_

Pride allowed himself an understated scowl. She’d done the exact _opposite_ of heeding his advice about the inanity of Alkahestry. And now she was trying to send Jude even further away, or bring some meddlesome alkahests to them. Surely Madame Hamburgang would not _listen_ to her foolish babble, however. Even so, Pride could not dismiss Jude’s lingering illness out of hand. What if he were to die before the Promised Day? His mind fizzed, assessing and reassessing their plans. The concept of the Fifth was called into question once again.

_Thanks again for letting me visit. Hope to see you again soon! :)_

_From Rosalie_

_P.S. Mother really loved the cookies we made! Let’s make some more sometime._

The letter was just as quickly folded back up and set aside.

“What did Rosalie say?” His little brother’s harsh voice disturbed his musing.

**“Her dear servant is still ill, it would seem. If we are to acquire him, we would need to travel to her, as she is not going to allow him to travel. However, if he is so unwell, Father may not wish to use him, lest he perish prematurely.”** Pride leaned over the edge of the couch, tipping his glass ever so slightly and trickling the rest of the wine into his shadow’s mouth. **“** **We still do not know if he performed Human Transmutation for certain, and as he is blind and unaware of us, it is very unlikely he will attempt to interfere with our plans. There is also Dr. Marcoh to consider.”**

“and Mustang?”

**“He is still a possibility.”** Yes, the Flame Alchemist had always been in consideration, with his soft human heart. Any damage to his pawns would send him scrambling to perform Human Transmutation, and his willingness to _attempt_ to get in their way kept him squarely in their purview. **“Far better we use the humans’ futile tenacity against them. Mustang would not dare abandon his _precious_ Lieutenant, so no doubt he will remain a candidate.”**

Beneath his potential as a Sacrifice, a deep, hushed corner of Pride’s mind cried out for his suffering, a fierce desire to behold his punishment and hear his bitch’s pathetic wails. His shadow’s teeth ground together, some drops of wine spattering against them, but he forced the thoughts down. He must be above such petty desires.

His container betrayed no emotion as it stood, and he strode off towards the hidden stairway, shadows pooled at his feet.

**“I shall go and inform Father of this recent news.”**

“Pride.” Wrath called to him.

**“Yes?”**

“You’re still wearing the scarf.”

Oh. His container halted. The shadows lapped at his shoes.

Much like those days before, Pride disentangled himself from the wool, dusting off his suit jacket. He must, of course, present himself impeccably before Father.

**“I must thank Rosalie for the scarf soon, lest she think us discourteous.”** A toying bled into his tone. Pride could not simply _ignore_ the child, after all, and it would make a pleasant enough distraction. He could curl up in Mother’s lap that evening and compose a cheerful response to the girl, thanking her for the gift and inviting her back sometime _before_ the eclipse. To check on Jude’s condition closer to the Promised Day. That was all it was. 

Pride nodded to himself, and tried to ignore what was definitely the delayed warmth of the wine welling inside him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And there we have it, a kiiinda explanation for why they didn't bother with Jude.
> 
> Thanks again everyone, and I may make this interconnected Bradley family fic thing a trilogy. But at the moment I’m working on something for tumblr, so keep your eyes peeled in a few weeks :) It’s also worth noting that Rosalie made a return in a little 4 panel comic I did for Halloween set after this fic. You can find it on my tumblr.


End file.
